We discussed the safety in South Africa and how far they have come from apartheid in class which raised a few of my own thoughts. During the summer of 2007, the BGSU rugby team toured South Africa while playing a few games. Although I was not in BG at the time, I was able to hear quite a bit about the trip as I joined the team in the fall. Our club was on tour playing some amazing rugby teams for two to three weeks and I never heard a word about them not feeling safe. They went out and got beat by 100+ points which is very unusual for our team but they did the norm in having a social with the opponents following the game. They did typical rugby things; drank beer, roasted a pig, and b.s.'ed with the other team...all in all having a great time. Off the pitch (field) they toured the country and saw some amazing things. Although this is not an example about soccer which we are discussing in class, this is an example of an American rugby team traveling halfway around the world and mingling with South Africans and not hearing anything about crime. Crime exists everywhere including Bowling Green, OH. We had a student explain how he was robbed at Burger King at gunpoint and I had a robber break into my house on East Merry at 4:00 A.M. over the summer. Things like this can easily happen anywhere and just hearing about it happen outside of our country shouldn't disco
urage us from traveli
ng to such venues.These pictures are from the BGSU Rugby team tour in South Africa that is also posted on the team's facebook page (BGSU Mens Rugby).
Kevin,
ReplyDeleteI'd like to say that I really liked this story about the BG Rugby team, and that I wasn't aware about there trip to S. Africa, so thank you for posting it.
A lot like you I had a few thoughts of my own following our discussions and readings about S. Africa. Your story about the Rugby team and the amount of crime in S. Africa reminded me of a website that I found about the rate of crime during the World Cup. If your interested here it the link:
http://www.truecrimexpo.co.za/
What I really found interesting was the amount of visitors that said they would recommend S. Africa as a tourist destination to other travelers. 92% of those who visited S. Africa during the World Cup said that they would recommend S. Africa as a tourist destination for holidays, despite its supposed high rate of crime.
Also interesting was the amount of crimes reported during the affairs of the World Cup. The article states that 2,773 crimes were reported during the World Cup (mostly petty theft), which means that of the 5.7 million visitors to S. Africa, only .048% were affected by crime.
And although the amount of murders in S. Africa is nearly 50 per day (Wow!), no World Cup supporters were killed during the matches.
Hopefully the World Cup will help to reduce the amount of crimes in S. Africa, and like you said, its important to remember that crime can happen anywhere. We shouldn't let it affect our opportunities to enjoy a sporting event, and the World Cup in S. Africa is evidence of that.
I really liked this post. I had no idea that the rugby team took a trip to South Africa. They must be really good at the sport to put up 100 points on our team.
ReplyDeleteI thought it was cool that they had social events after each game. In curling we also do the same thing after every match. Maybe not as big as the rugby players, but we sit down have beers and talk about our experiances in the sport.
I also did not know that the rugby team went to South Africa in 2007. I would like to check out more about the rugby team's trip. If you could link the website, that would be great. Thanks for sharing this. You might want to bring it up when we talk about rugby in South Africa on Thursday.
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