Sometimes it’s the great, dramatic events that stand out in our memories as the days we’ll remember for the rest of our lives. On the other hand maybe it’s an encounter that lasts only a few seconds that starts changing your life’s perspective for the better. Spending a year in Kenya provided me with so many experiences; big and small. From the ‘Big Five’ to Christmas day with my adopted family in the village; every day was a day to remember. But since returning home to the UK I’ve come to realize that there is one day I hope I’ll never forget.
The process that led up to this day is almost as memorable as the day itself. One Sunday afternoon in May a group of about 25 young boys, ranging from about 7 to 17 years old gathered around the compound of our little wooden house in the tea reserve near to Kericho in rural Kenya. They had decided to go and play football in the field of a nearby primary school and had organized their own match against the boys in that area. Off they went, leaving me at home. An hour or so later they came trudging back looking down hearted. The watchman at the school had sent them away because they were unsupervised. My youngest host-brother spent the rest of the evening being a grumpy 9 year old and I started wondering if there was something I could do. The next afternoon found me in the headmaster’s office asking for permission to supervise the boys one day after school. As someone who had not played ‘organised’ football for almost a decade I didn’t think it through so much. How difficult could it be right?! Permission was sought from the school management and suddenly the Mzungu (European) girl had a football team.
On the Wednesday afternoon I arrived in the field and wondered what to do next. I asked the headmaster is there was a teacher who could referee for me or a whistle we could use. Answers to both questions were negative. At least I hoped my little brother would bring the ball along with his team! So thanks to a talent I had picked up for whistling very loud, I gathered 11 players from each school who all promised me that they were Under 14. They all shook hands and a coin was tossed to decide which team would kick off first. Following that first game I was persuaded to ‘train’ the boys at least twice in a week. Sometimes they arrived late, sometimes it was pouring with rain, sometimes the ball was flat. But we played and the improvement was dramatic. After three months practicing they were no longer the ‘kick it up in the air and hope it lands near someone on my team’ players of May. They could control and pass to each other, they learned how to do a throw in correctly and were starting to realise that the off side rule does actually matter.
In October I discovered that there was going to be a tournament dedicated to Jamhuri Day (Independence or Hero’s Day) in Kenya. In the weeks leading up to this day my two teams would play against others from the area to compete for the final places to play for the District Commissioner and other officials on 13th December 2010. The lead up to this final did not go smoothly.
On the day of the play offs we were the only teams to arrive. Even after the drama of getting the boys to raise their own funds to take the matatu to another village for the match, being promised that lunch was provided and waiting over 6 hours for the other teams to arrive. We played two matches and my teams rose to the top of the table. Despite our best efforts not all the matches were played. I was furious at the organisers for their lax attitude to these boys who had tried so hard and the discovery that it probably didn’t matter that we were at the top of the table. They were just going to submit their friends for the final anyway. I was tired, my 40 boys were hungry and cold and it looked like all my effort was coming to nothing. So I decided I had to do something. I called all the old men ‘organisers’ together and announced that the play offs had to be completed the next Sunday. I would get the field, they would get the referees and we would start at 11am. Any team more than 10 minutes late would be disqualified…
Stunned silence…
…Then suddenly they all started talking at once.
“Who was this white girl from Kiptere?”
“What good ever came out of there anyway?”
“Why does she care about who plays in the final?”
All spoken in their mother tongue of Kipsigis which they believed I could not understand… mistake number one. Mistake number two was their belief that these young boys didn’t matter. I felt like a mother hearing gossip about her child, except there were 40 of them! Over the past 10 months my Kipsigis was good enough to understand them but my reply had to come in English.
“These boys matter. They had been promised so much of today and you could not even arrive in time. If you want to play in a final you have to conduct the play offs fairly. This is not just an ‘old boys club’. This year it will be different. I will speak with the District Commissioner on Monday and if you don’t attend next week’s matches don’t come and expect to play on Jamhuri day.”
Eventually they agreed and invited me to go and have tea with them to seal the deal. Mistake number three… my boys had still not been fed; no way was I going to eat before they were taken care of. So I politely refused and explained my stand (Especially since to refuse tea in Kenya is very very rare!). They were so shocked that someone would consider the boys before themselves that they even gave me the money to buy tea and something to eat for the boys. So we left for home, stopping at a small hotel to have tea before walking the rest of the way through the fields together. They were tired but still excited for the next weekend and ready to take on the teams again, certain that we would make it to the final.
The next Sunday I arrived in the field early but found that my boys were already there practising. By 11am most of the teams had arrived; except the one that was due to play first against my team, Kiptere. I was also lacking the promised referees but was informed that they were ‘on the way’; in the meantime I would referee myself. When the team was more than 20 minutes late I declared a walkover. This gave my team three points and a 3-0 win over the other team. Four matches later, still no official referee, I was starting to get a bit tired. Kiptere were still top of the table and Kesainet ranked third. With time running out and my energy almost all gone after refereeing 7 matches (the others never arrived) we discussed with the teams and decided that the last match would be a little shorter to ensure we finished before dark. It would be the decider, with one team winning they could rise to second place and knock Kesainet out of their newly won place and with the other, just a draw would be enough for my teams to go through to the final. After nail-biting penalties; the result was in our favor… we were in the final!
Exhausted and elated we went home to tell our parents. These young boys from the ‘tea’ had finally become a team!
The day of the finals drew closer and I made many trips to the District Commissioners office to ensure that I would be given money for lunch and transport to bring the two teams for the match. I organized a matatu that would bring the boys the 8km from our village to the pitch. I made sure that we had a good football and arranged the time/place to meet on the day itself.
The morning of the finals I left early to go and pick up the transport (plus driver and conductor). It had been raining over the past few days so I walked in Wellington Boots and carried my trainers for later. Arriving at our arranged meeting place I could only see 5 boys waiting. I asked where the others were, ‘they’re coming, they’re coming’. We waited.
After 20 mins I had assembled enough boys to make one team. About 13 were still missing. The driver was becoming impatient and I was anxious that we were about to lose our transport too. So I made the decision… we left them behind…
Arriving in the field we helped to set up for the events of the day; raising the national flag, setting up the public address system and putting up the goal nets. An hour after we arrived one of the boys approached me and told me that the others were now all waiting where we had organized to meet. Waiting for me and the car. Now did I have a choice? Leave my players there and go to collect the others (like the shepherd leaving the 99 sheep to look for the one that is lost) or did I stay with those who were on time and make the match a 5-a-side. After all our hard work and preparation I could not leave them stranded. I searched for a lift back home and on the way discovered that the boys had already started walking, aimlessly along the 8km to the pitch. Jumping out of the car they were excited to see me and assumed, wrongly, that I was going to bundle them into a bus to head back to the celebrations. No, they missed the bus, we would have to walk and that was that. So putting on the radio on my mobile phone I and my remaining 13 boys (plus supporters) started marching to the field.
Waved at wonderingly by villagers as we passed, the European girl like the Pied Piper with her boys following behind…and with Wellies on like a farmer too! We marched; they complained I was going too fast. We marched; they said they were hungry. We marched and we marched. After what seemed like forever the pitch came into sight.
We had made it. The match had not begun, only the official speeches were underway. I tried to sneak into the back of the crowd but there is another disadvantage to being a drastically different skin colour to those around you, I stand out a bit. After a few minutes I was invited to make my speech. I had still not changed my Wellies to trainers, I was still a bit out of breath from our march and I had no idea what I would say. Taking a deep breath to compose myself, somehow I knew what I would say.
“Today is Hero’s day in Kenya. But I want to tell you about my real heroes. You see those small boys over there… they’re the ones we should be cheering. They’ve fought hard to get to play for your entertainment today. Building teams from nothing just a few months ago. Even today half of them walked all the way from Kiptere just to get here. (Ok they missed my bus!). These young people are the future of Kenya. They are my heroes and they are the ones that are going to make this country great.”
Nothing like a bit of motivational speaking to wake you up in the morning! Somehow they were impressed anyway, especially since I made an effort to come dressed like a local farmer too!
Early afternoon and the match was underway. Now I’m ashamed to say that I don’t remember which team won or lost, who scored the goals or who would have been ‘man of the match’. But what I do remember is that after eating a huge lunch of ugali, beans AND meat the boys then watched the senior finals, aspiring to one day become like these men.
The night was dark and rainy when we piled about 40 small boys into a mini bus designed for much less.
I took home one winning team and one losing team, did it matter? Not one bit.
They had gone to a real football pitch, played under a real referee (not just me!), eaten lunch in a real hotel (with meat!) and now were singing together with their friends on the way home.
These are my heroes.
10 year old boys who probably speak only about 100 words of English and a referee who speaks even less Kipsigis…
Who believed that I could train them, who believed that they could win and who showed everyone around that, yes, something good can come out of Kiptere!
The process that led up to this day is almost as memorable as the day itself. One Sunday afternoon in May a group of about 25 young boys, ranging from about 7 to 17 years old gathered around the compound of our little wooden house in the tea reserve near to Kericho in rural Kenya. They had decided to go and play football in the field of a nearby primary school and had organized their own match against the boys in that area. Off they went, leaving me at home. An hour or so later they came trudging back looking down hearted. The watchman at the school had sent them away because they were unsupervised. My youngest host-brother spent the rest of the evening being a grumpy 9 year old and I started wondering if there was something I could do. The next afternoon found me in the headmaster’s office asking for permission to supervise the boys one day after school. As someone who had not played ‘organised’ football for almost a decade I didn’t think it through so much. How difficult could it be right?! Permission was sought from the school management and suddenly the Mzungu (European) girl had a football team.
On the Wednesday afternoon I arrived in the field and wondered what to do next. I asked the headmaster is there was a teacher who could referee for me or a whistle we could use. Answers to both questions were negative. At least I hoped my little brother would bring the ball along with his team! So thanks to a talent I had picked up for whistling very loud, I gathered 11 players from each school who all promised me that they were Under 14. They all shook hands and a coin was tossed to decide which team would kick off first. Following that first game I was persuaded to ‘train’ the boys at least twice in a week. Sometimes they arrived late, sometimes it was pouring with rain, sometimes the ball was flat. But we played and the improvement was dramatic. After three months practicing they were no longer the ‘kick it up in the air and hope it lands near someone on my team’ players of May. They could control and pass to each other, they learned how to do a throw in correctly and were starting to realise that the off side rule does actually matter.
In October I discovered that there was going to be a tournament dedicated to Jamhuri Day (Independence or Hero’s Day) in Kenya. In the weeks leading up to this day my two teams would play against others from the area to compete for the final places to play for the District Commissioner and other officials on 13th December 2010. The lead up to this final did not go smoothly.
On the day of the play offs we were the only teams to arrive. Even after the drama of getting the boys to raise their own funds to take the matatu to another village for the match, being promised that lunch was provided and waiting over 6 hours for the other teams to arrive. We played two matches and my teams rose to the top of the table. Despite our best efforts not all the matches were played. I was furious at the organisers for their lax attitude to these boys who had tried so hard and the discovery that it probably didn’t matter that we were at the top of the table. They were just going to submit their friends for the final anyway. I was tired, my 40 boys were hungry and cold and it looked like all my effort was coming to nothing. So I decided I had to do something. I called all the old men ‘organisers’ together and announced that the play offs had to be completed the next Sunday. I would get the field, they would get the referees and we would start at 11am. Any team more than 10 minutes late would be disqualified…
Stunned silence…
…Then suddenly they all started talking at once.
“Who was this white girl from Kiptere?”
“What good ever came out of there anyway?”
“Why does she care about who plays in the final?”
All spoken in their mother tongue of Kipsigis which they believed I could not understand… mistake number one. Mistake number two was their belief that these young boys didn’t matter. I felt like a mother hearing gossip about her child, except there were 40 of them! Over the past 10 months my Kipsigis was good enough to understand them but my reply had to come in English.
“These boys matter. They had been promised so much of today and you could not even arrive in time. If you want to play in a final you have to conduct the play offs fairly. This is not just an ‘old boys club’. This year it will be different. I will speak with the District Commissioner on Monday and if you don’t attend next week’s matches don’t come and expect to play on Jamhuri day.”
Eventually they agreed and invited me to go and have tea with them to seal the deal. Mistake number three… my boys had still not been fed; no way was I going to eat before they were taken care of. So I politely refused and explained my stand (Especially since to refuse tea in Kenya is very very rare!). They were so shocked that someone would consider the boys before themselves that they even gave me the money to buy tea and something to eat for the boys. So we left for home, stopping at a small hotel to have tea before walking the rest of the way through the fields together. They were tired but still excited for the next weekend and ready to take on the teams again, certain that we would make it to the final.
The next Sunday I arrived in the field early but found that my boys were already there practising. By 11am most of the teams had arrived; except the one that was due to play first against my team, Kiptere. I was also lacking the promised referees but was informed that they were ‘on the way’; in the meantime I would referee myself. When the team was more than 20 minutes late I declared a walkover. This gave my team three points and a 3-0 win over the other team. Four matches later, still no official referee, I was starting to get a bit tired. Kiptere were still top of the table and Kesainet ranked third. With time running out and my energy almost all gone after refereeing 7 matches (the others never arrived) we discussed with the teams and decided that the last match would be a little shorter to ensure we finished before dark. It would be the decider, with one team winning they could rise to second place and knock Kesainet out of their newly won place and with the other, just a draw would be enough for my teams to go through to the final. After nail-biting penalties; the result was in our favor… we were in the final!
Exhausted and elated we went home to tell our parents. These young boys from the ‘tea’ had finally become a team!
The day of the finals drew closer and I made many trips to the District Commissioners office to ensure that I would be given money for lunch and transport to bring the two teams for the match. I organized a matatu that would bring the boys the 8km from our village to the pitch. I made sure that we had a good football and arranged the time/place to meet on the day itself.
The morning of the finals I left early to go and pick up the transport (plus driver and conductor). It had been raining over the past few days so I walked in Wellington Boots and carried my trainers for later. Arriving at our arranged meeting place I could only see 5 boys waiting. I asked where the others were, ‘they’re coming, they’re coming’. We waited.
After 20 mins I had assembled enough boys to make one team. About 13 were still missing. The driver was becoming impatient and I was anxious that we were about to lose our transport too. So I made the decision… we left them behind…
Arriving in the field we helped to set up for the events of the day; raising the national flag, setting up the public address system and putting up the goal nets. An hour after we arrived one of the boys approached me and told me that the others were now all waiting where we had organized to meet. Waiting for me and the car. Now did I have a choice? Leave my players there and go to collect the others (like the shepherd leaving the 99 sheep to look for the one that is lost) or did I stay with those who were on time and make the match a 5-a-side. After all our hard work and preparation I could not leave them stranded. I searched for a lift back home and on the way discovered that the boys had already started walking, aimlessly along the 8km to the pitch. Jumping out of the car they were excited to see me and assumed, wrongly, that I was going to bundle them into a bus to head back to the celebrations. No, they missed the bus, we would have to walk and that was that. So putting on the radio on my mobile phone I and my remaining 13 boys (plus supporters) started marching to the field.
Waved at wonderingly by villagers as we passed, the European girl like the Pied Piper with her boys following behind…and with Wellies on like a farmer too! We marched; they complained I was going too fast. We marched; they said they were hungry. We marched and we marched. After what seemed like forever the pitch came into sight.
We had made it. The match had not begun, only the official speeches were underway. I tried to sneak into the back of the crowd but there is another disadvantage to being a drastically different skin colour to those around you, I stand out a bit. After a few minutes I was invited to make my speech. I had still not changed my Wellies to trainers, I was still a bit out of breath from our march and I had no idea what I would say. Taking a deep breath to compose myself, somehow I knew what I would say.
“Today is Hero’s day in Kenya. But I want to tell you about my real heroes. You see those small boys over there… they’re the ones we should be cheering. They’ve fought hard to get to play for your entertainment today. Building teams from nothing just a few months ago. Even today half of them walked all the way from Kiptere just to get here. (Ok they missed my bus!). These young people are the future of Kenya. They are my heroes and they are the ones that are going to make this country great.”
Nothing like a bit of motivational speaking to wake you up in the morning! Somehow they were impressed anyway, especially since I made an effort to come dressed like a local farmer too!
Early afternoon and the match was underway. Now I’m ashamed to say that I don’t remember which team won or lost, who scored the goals or who would have been ‘man of the match’. But what I do remember is that after eating a huge lunch of ugali, beans AND meat the boys then watched the senior finals, aspiring to one day become like these men.
The night was dark and rainy when we piled about 40 small boys into a mini bus designed for much less.
I took home one winning team and one losing team, did it matter? Not one bit.
They had gone to a real football pitch, played under a real referee (not just me!), eaten lunch in a real hotel (with meat!) and now were singing together with their friends on the way home.
These are my heroes.
10 year old boys who probably speak only about 100 words of English and a referee who speaks even less Kipsigis…
Who believed that I could train them, who believed that they could win and who showed everyone around that, yes, something good can come out of Kiptere!
