Bending it Like Eto'o

Just over a year ago, the eight volunteers in the department of Saraya were sitting on the floor of our hut (it’s a good thing we have a giant hut—it doubles as a work zone office) going around and sharing about what we had been working on and our ideas for future projects. It was there that Marielle, who had just moved to our site to finish out her service, first got the ball rolling (pun intended). “I’d like to start a girls’ soccer team.”

Marielle is a great runner, and some of the kids in her compound had been tagging along on her runs (which is impressive…I never even tried to keep up with her). She also had been given some practice jerseys and a few balls. It was one of the moments in my service that I remember feeling giddy about an upcoming experience. I knew that I was going to love this. I wanted in.

The first challenge was finding a time to play. Girls are expected to help out at home with the never-ending chores: pounding grain, cooking, cleaning, laundry. Everything has to be done by hand and thus takes forever. Organized play is not something that they or their moms are used to, so it was tricky. Fortunately, we started during cold season, so playing in the afternoon was bearable. But they were always coming over to look at our watches and would throw off their jerseys and run home in the middle of the game if it got too late, and the average age of the girls who play has decreased with time.

Marielle finished her service last April, and, along with some of her projects, I inherited the head coach position. It was hot season then, so we couldn’t play in the afternoons any more. At the time, the water crisis was in full swing, and there was no water on Sunday mornings. Since girls couldn’t carry water those mornings, we chose that time to play and made it an official weekly thing. That worked, but then things got really busy for me when rainy season came and my malaria project started up. And they stayed busy, so I haven’t been able to keep soccer a regular thing. Every time I pass a group of girls, they’ll yell, “Sadio, when are we going to zouer?” (The French word for play is “jouer”, but the little girls can’t make that sound so it comes out as a z and is super cute.) I squeeze in games whenever I can—the girls love it, and it really helps me to feel present in the community.  The majority of my work has been in the villages surrounding my site, so it’s nice to do something here. I’ll tell the girls that we’ll play in the evening, and by mid-afternoon, a group has started lurking around the entrance to my hut.

It’s not always easy though. Once you get the girls to the field, the second challenge is to keep the boys away. They apparently have a sixth sense for knowing where a soccer game is happening, because wherever we play, they always show up and disrupt things, coming on the field and demanding to play. There are some that just can’t handle watching girls get to play a game with the toubabs. (The constant shortage of soccer balls does not help this. It is not infrequent that we have guests who come to see us just to ask to borrow a soccer ball. We stopped lending them out because they would always get destroyed or never come back.) Sometimes boys can be helpful and ref or explain more difficult soccer rules in Malinke, but sometimes I have to put on my threatening face and chase them away. They recently built a wall around the school, and the girls locked the gate from the inside when we were playing yesterday. All of a sudden I looked up to see boys scaling the wall not unlike the zombies in the Israel scene from World War Z. One day, we were walking from my hut to the school with the ball and jerseys and ran into the Inspector of Youth (real title). “Sadio, you are training the young girls! I should have been informed about this!”  Everyone wants in.

 

Playing with the girls is usually a blast, but it always makes me reflect hard on the differences between my own childhood soccer days and what these girls have to work with. Think of an AYSO soccer scene. Take away the grass and replace it with dirt and trash. Take away the cleats and replace them with one jelly shoe (two girls will share a pair). Take away the goals and replace them with some sticks. Take away the soccer shorts and replace them with wrap skirts that are so difficult to run in they often get ripped off and thrown on the ground. But the thing is, the kids are the same. There are the ones that are clearly natural athletes at the age of 6. There are the ones that sit down in the middle of the field and play with something they found as the game passes them by. They are more concerned with what color jersey they get and how it fits than any other aspect of the game. Herd-ball is definitely a thing. Depending on the day, either everyone or no one wants to be the goalie. And, despite conditions that would shock the average American youth soccer team, I am willing to bet they have just as much fun.

Coaching this team, however, has proved to be as challenging as it is fun. Since they have never encountered any other forum for learning sportsmanship, fights break out at a rate that continually shocks me. Having a large age range doesn’t help much, and siblings aren’t very graceful towards each other. I have had to scream my head off to break up fights…not the image I had of myself as a Peace Corps volunteer. I have decided that I won’t let them get away with acting like terrors, and I have stopped a game soon after it started.

In the end, though, all of my frustrations are trumped by the beautiful moments. Yesterday, for example, Kany showed up late but with a bag in her hand. Everyone stopped. They knew what was in the bag. Her dad had bought her lace-up shoes for playing soccer. She put them on the ground and looked at them for a second. Samouro piped up, “Sadio sits down when she puts on her shoes like that.” Kany proceeded to put on the shoes and then tie funny knots around her ankles. She was ready to play.