Commonwealth Games: Letter from South African to Birmingham Parent

Team SA has been making themselves comfortable in Birmingham where the 2022 Commonwealth Games will be kicking off on Thursday evening. Here is a (tongue-in-cheek) letter from Team SA’s prolific writer GARY LEMKE to a Birmingham parent…

Dear University of Birmingham Parent,

Firstly, a huge thank you for allowing us to use the facilities that your son/daughter has come to know as daily life at the University of Birmingham. This is a note to update you on developments since we arrived in the UK to be part of the 2022 Commonwealth Games. Team South Africa has been allocated a block called Mason Hall and I type this from my room on the fourth floor.

As I look out my rectangular window, one of two such windows in the room, all I see are green trees and leaves, some which seem to be turning a shade of brown. Surely it’s too early for autumn? The windows are each just over a metre wide and about three Red Bull tins high, and they push open about 10cm.

It’s good to get some air into the room, because it can get a bit stuffy and there isn’t a fan, although as I write to you my foot keeps bumping a wall heater underneath the desk. I don’t need the heater and I won’t use it before leaving on 9 August. We were a little worried about the heat when we arrived because we had seen England was up in flames and temperatures touching a record 40 deg C this past week. Fortunately, it has rained every day since we’ve been in Birmingham, which has cooled things somewhat.

There seems to be a railway line beyond the trees because two trains have just gone past in short succession. I thought the expression only applied to London, you know, where they say you wait for ages for a bus and then two come along at once. I haven’t seen much of Birmingham as yet, although the bus driver did seem to go out of his way to show us parts of the region that not even he had seen before. The route from Birmingham airport to the Welcome Centre where we were Covid tested and accredited and then onto the University grounds was about six hours, but we hear the process has been speeded up since.

I’ve read that annual tuition fees for this University are capped at £9 250. I’d reckon it’s money well spent. Although, in our language that’s about a million rands a year, just about the same as a month’s petrol and electricity expenses. Just kidding, it’s about R200 000, which is about the same as a month’s petrol and electricity expenses. Mostly we pay for the electricity without getting any, but I digress.

Mason Hall has been a hive of activity as various Team SA squads arrive and are handed out their kit.

The kit itself is the envy of the Commonwealth. We are kitted out by Mr Price Sport and their X Elite range continues the favourable impression made at last year’s Olympics and Paralympics. We didn’t always look this good – please don’t Google “South African Olympic kit 2016”. Having a kit that the athletes are proud to wear and feel good in does wonders for self-esteem and it is actually performance-enhancing.

Next to our apartment block is Team England and then Team New Zealand and opposite us is Team Wales. We’re expecting some of our neighbours to get a bit noisy over the coming fortnight, but I’d thought of asking SA Rugby if we could borrow the Webb Ellis Cup and put it outside our Team SA entrance. I’m sure that will shut them up.

Our athletes are settling in nicely into the university and its surroundings. We’re split into three venues, and in this particular block are our swimmers, hockey players (men and women), wheelchair basketballers, gymnasts and medical staff. We are expecting more arrivals today.

Your son/daughter has a wonderful room. I’m sure they have told you, “Mom, Dad, the room is functional, it’s nice. Nothing too fancy, but it’s clean and safe.”

The room is better than they described. On each floor there are two large rooms with a kitchen area. One on the extreme left, one on the extreme right. There’s a passage with three identical rooms on either side of the corridor. You open the door and immediately on the left is a bathroom, with a toilet, shower and basin. The sign on the bathroom wall says, “I am a wet room. My floor will get wet. My toilet seat might get wet too. You can use my ‘squeegee’ to push any excess water down the plug hole after showering’. On that note, lol, one of our swimming medal hopefuls said that their shower wouldn’t drain and water was starting to run onto the carpet. So, some wise guy cracked, “well, you’re a swimmer so you have nothing to worry about.”

Each athlete has their own, identical room. Perfect.

The rest of the room has a long desk, from which I’m writing and space for 10 plugs. You can rest assured there’s plenty of place to plug in things like laptops, Xboxes, kettles, toasters and a TV. And all the plugs work. In South Africa we wouldn’t be able to tell you whether they work or not, because we’d likely be loadshedding, a fancy name for power blackouts.

The bed is comfortable, I think they call it a three-quarter size? It’s very different from what we experienced in Tokyo. There the beds were made of cardboard, which were rumoured to be to reduce bedroom shenanigans. I’m not sure it did because we saw social media videos of athletes jumping on their beds, which stood firm. These beds are clearly more sleep friendly and while they may be new, they don’t have that “new” feel to them.

The facilities are a-m-a-z-i-n-g. When we arrived at the Games in Delhi in 2010 the athletes’ accommodation was still a work in progress. Harris Majeke, South Africa’s High Commissioner to India, told reporters a snake had been found in the room of an athlete at the Games village. “That was really a threat to the lives of our athletes,” he said at the time.

We have no such concerns here in Birmingham. The layout, walkways and training venues are world-class, the canteens look a little small for the number of athletes that are still to arrive, but there’s no doubting the quality, the cleanliness and the functionality of the university premises.

We realise that Birmingham stepped forward to stage these 2022 Games at very late notice because Durban, the host city, got cold feet after being awarded the event. And your preparation wasn’t helped by two years of Covid-enforced lockdowns and restrictions. Well done!

Thank you for allowing us to call the university home for a few weeks and to Birmingham for hosting us. We will look after the facilities as if they were our own, but please do forgive us for celebrating when we win medals, which we’re going to do. We don’t have an awful lot to celebrate back home, so our athletes are going to do their best to lift the mood of the nation.

It’s a busy Saturday morning, but what a welcome change to the eerie, unnatural world we have lived in for the past two years.

Let the Games begin!

Regards,

Gary

PS: I know the two big football clubs around here are Birmingham and Aston Villa, but I’m yet to find someone who believes that local lad Jack Grealish is worth the £100-million paid for him to move to Manchester.

IF YOU’RE IN SOUTH AFRICA – Watch Team SA in action at the Commonwealth Games on Showmax Pro! 

Source: TeamSA