It was Thursday on the first of May. I awoke in a pool of sweat like usual, shivering from the cool Atlantic breeze coming in through the window of the stodge (the peace corps frat house). I hadn’t planed on breaking three month challenge by staying the night in the capital but with Dan leaving and everyone in town to take a break from village life time got the best of us, and by the time we realized it I wasn’t going to be able to catch a gilly back to site. I went back to the office to check some last minute e-mails then took a taxi to Westfield to hail a gilly gilly to site. It was game day. And as the newly elected coach of the village’s football team they were counting on me to I guess pull some sort of miracle win for them from the sidelines. Half the village still thinks I’m English or German and thus an expert in football, ironically if they only knew how much the entire country of America loathed soccer and saw it as a “child’s” sport. Luckily for them though I am the rare American who has obsessed over the beautiful game my entire life.
The afternoon arrived quickly and the entire football team came for an inspirational game day speech from their coach… and yes I gave them the ‘ol “win one for the gipper/mighty ducks speech”. An empty “15” passenger van arrived shortly after and we crowded the entire team into it along with coaches, substitutes, reserves, and a few supporters who climbed on to the roof. Now it was transformed into a 30 passenger van, TIA. It was a half an hour ride along a sandy bush road to get to the game and we must have prayed 6 times before we got there. Before we left we prayed, along with stopping at every village on the way to say a little prayer, not to mention when we got there I was told to give a candle to a random woman and tell her to pray for our team (a common tradition in the area I’m told). We arrived into a wall of sound and energy, so immense it practically swept me off my feet. This wasn’t a 70,000 capacity Stanford Bridge or Anfield stadium in England but a bumpy field in west Africa with tree limbs for goal posts and it had me mistaken. The team and I were escorted through a maze of rice bag fencing and metal partitions amidst a large number of puzzled stares aimed solely in my direction. Frankly I think the administration of the football league here thought my village was cheating somehow having a foreign coach. The football commission in the area is incredibly anal about cheating and with full right. Corruption isn’t exactly alien to west Africa and in this major tournament it was common place to have first division national footballers come back to their cousin’s uncle’s brother’s village, claim to have lineage there, and play for the team. In Gambia though that’s fairly easy considering anyone can easily trace their family trees throughout the entire country. It’s become such a problem that the Football commission literally has to match each player to a photo to make sure that they are in fact from that village and/or have lived there for at least 6 months (which is why I’m thus coaching and not playing).
The match was coming up fast and we barely had time to do a full warm up and stretch. We were pushed off towards the field, our captain running out first into a herd of screaming fans. Even university football games in American don’t get this much crowd support. At the very least for a soccer match played on a sandy field with the lines merely the referee’s shoe indentations dragged across the ground. The whistle blew, the game began. The drum beats in the background were thunderous vibrated your very soul. Supporters gathered in groups to dance and sing as they screamed profanities at the referees and opposing team. This is how the game should be played; with passion and grace, pulse and pace. Logistically the first half was a disaster going a goal down early in the game ending the half down two to nothing. We barely touched the ball and I was on the sidelines trying very hard not to throw chairs and benches at the ref and my own players. Coming into half time though I urged the other coaches to be calm and remain supportive. If the kids needed anything it was to see our composure. Something had to be done, I told the team to catch their breath and I switched our formation from a standard 4-4-2 to a 3-5-2. We needed to start controlling the ball and the pace of the game, and considering every game in this tournament was a must win the sacrifice of a defender was well worth the support of a larger midfield. The second half started and from the first minute it was apparent a new team had entered the game. The opposition seemed to have felt very content with their 2 goal lead and gave up even with a few of their key players being injured in the early minutes. We took control of the game, having the majority of the ball possession and attacking chances and slowly came back. One goal came in the ‘75th minute, and as the final seconds wound down the emotions were high. You could feel the goal coming before it ever happened, a perfect pass through the defense to a sprinting attacker. He shot, and the goal was blocked by innate reflexes, only to be deflected into the path of our other striker. The crowd rushed the field like a summer storm and cheers erupted like thunder. The game ended as a draw but our team surely took the better result coming back from two goals down. I shook the hands of the opposing coaches and refs and the team celebrated by breaking out warm sodas from a cooler. Thankfully there was no ice… I had a nice shirt on.
We crowded back into the vans and headed back to the village chanting, the driver literally holding his hand on the horn the entire way. Coming back into town the atmosphere was overwhelming and overpowering. It was a raucous clash of boisterous chanting and screaming. A loud mess of spirit and rhythm like nothing I could ever imagine. These kids could have been war heroes coming home from a long and perilous campaign in a distant land. Their faces tan with distinct patches of dirt, their bodies riddled with growing bruises and dried blood, but their voices loud and clear. We drove through the entire village in song, children hanging on to the site of the van and the girls singing and dancing. Ending our parade of chaotic children we did another couple victory laps through my compound, barely fitting between the walls of mud brick houses and the low branches of a mango tree. This is how the game should be played: on a shitty field, with tattered shoes, degraded uniforms, and a pure heart. If only our lives could be lived as simply.
In recent news my football team played their second game in the group stage of the regional dry season tournament. We won 1-0 and advanced to the quarter-final round by a perfectly executed free kick. We won even with two of my players randomly collapsing on the field due to “Black Magic”. (… sigh). No joke 20 minutes into the match my goalie just falls over complaining of pulsing pain in the back of the head, but he’s able to get up and grit through the rest of the game a few minutes later. Then at the end of the first half my left defender keels over to the ground screaming in agony, yet he wasn’t near anyone to make any sort of collision. He began tossing and turning in the sand exclaiming that his body was “extremely hot” as if his very blood stream was circulating molten lava; as well as abdominal pain that he said felt like an anvil. I rationally attempted to have the situation explained to me but was told that I “wouldn’t understand… this is a black man’s curse, African sorcery.” They went on to tell me that the opposing team must have paid a ‘Maraboo’, a Gambian shaman if you will, to cast a spell upon our team so that it’s players would begin to burn up and not be able to play. My defender began to stand up all of a sudden, drunkenly stating he was fine but he was obviously delirious. Attempting to reduce the already rapidly spreading hysteria among my team I urged a few of the older men to keep him down or take him somewhere else. We walked back to the locker room and I gave my usual inspiring halftime speech over the gut wrenching cries of my cursed outside defender. The game ended and both players seemed to miraculously feel better. Whether that was because of the coursing adrenaline from the win or the curse wearing off, who knows. As a scientist I’d love to discredit the entire event medically, but a piece of me still thinks it’s pretty fun to believe in magic. What would life be like after all without the romantic lure of the supernatural, that enchanting thirst to explore the unexplained. *X-Files theme plays in background*
The afternoon arrived quickly and the entire football team came for an inspirational game day speech from their coach… and yes I gave them the ‘ol “win one for the gipper/mighty ducks speech”. An empty “15” passenger van arrived shortly after and we crowded the entire team into it along with coaches, substitutes, reserves, and a few supporters who climbed on to the roof. Now it was transformed into a 30 passenger van, TIA. It was a half an hour ride along a sandy bush road to get to the game and we must have prayed 6 times before we got there. Before we left we prayed, along with stopping at every village on the way to say a little prayer, not to mention when we got there I was told to give a candle to a random woman and tell her to pray for our team (a common tradition in the area I’m told). We arrived into a wall of sound and energy, so immense it practically swept me off my feet. This wasn’t a 70,000 capacity Stanford Bridge or Anfield stadium in England but a bumpy field in west Africa with tree limbs for goal posts and it had me mistaken. The team and I were escorted through a maze of rice bag fencing and metal partitions amidst a large number of puzzled stares aimed solely in my direction. Frankly I think the administration of the football league here thought my village was cheating somehow having a foreign coach. The football commission in the area is incredibly anal about cheating and with full right. Corruption isn’t exactly alien to west Africa and in this major tournament it was common place to have first division national footballers come back to their cousin’s uncle’s brother’s village, claim to have lineage there, and play for the team. In Gambia though that’s fairly easy considering anyone can easily trace their family trees throughout the entire country. It’s become such a problem that the Football commission literally has to match each player to a photo to make sure that they are in fact from that village and/or have lived there for at least 6 months (which is why I’m thus coaching and not playing).
The match was coming up fast and we barely had time to do a full warm up and stretch. We were pushed off towards the field, our captain running out first into a herd of screaming fans. Even university football games in American don’t get this much crowd support. At the very least for a soccer match played on a sandy field with the lines merely the referee’s shoe indentations dragged across the ground. The whistle blew, the game began. The drum beats in the background were thunderous vibrated your very soul. Supporters gathered in groups to dance and sing as they screamed profanities at the referees and opposing team. This is how the game should be played; with passion and grace, pulse and pace. Logistically the first half was a disaster going a goal down early in the game ending the half down two to nothing. We barely touched the ball and I was on the sidelines trying very hard not to throw chairs and benches at the ref and my own players. Coming into half time though I urged the other coaches to be calm and remain supportive. If the kids needed anything it was to see our composure. Something had to be done, I told the team to catch their breath and I switched our formation from a standard 4-4-2 to a 3-5-2. We needed to start controlling the ball and the pace of the game, and considering every game in this tournament was a must win the sacrifice of a defender was well worth the support of a larger midfield. The second half started and from the first minute it was apparent a new team had entered the game. The opposition seemed to have felt very content with their 2 goal lead and gave up even with a few of their key players being injured in the early minutes. We took control of the game, having the majority of the ball possession and attacking chances and slowly came back. One goal came in the ‘75th minute, and as the final seconds wound down the emotions were high. You could feel the goal coming before it ever happened, a perfect pass through the defense to a sprinting attacker. He shot, and the goal was blocked by innate reflexes, only to be deflected into the path of our other striker. The crowd rushed the field like a summer storm and cheers erupted like thunder. The game ended as a draw but our team surely took the better result coming back from two goals down. I shook the hands of the opposing coaches and refs and the team celebrated by breaking out warm sodas from a cooler. Thankfully there was no ice… I had a nice shirt on.
We crowded back into the vans and headed back to the village chanting, the driver literally holding his hand on the horn the entire way. Coming back into town the atmosphere was overwhelming and overpowering. It was a raucous clash of boisterous chanting and screaming. A loud mess of spirit and rhythm like nothing I could ever imagine. These kids could have been war heroes coming home from a long and perilous campaign in a distant land. Their faces tan with distinct patches of dirt, their bodies riddled with growing bruises and dried blood, but their voices loud and clear. We drove through the entire village in song, children hanging on to the site of the van and the girls singing and dancing. Ending our parade of chaotic children we did another couple victory laps through my compound, barely fitting between the walls of mud brick houses and the low branches of a mango tree. This is how the game should be played: on a shitty field, with tattered shoes, degraded uniforms, and a pure heart. If only our lives could be lived as simply.
In recent news my football team played their second game in the group stage of the regional dry season tournament. We won 1-0 and advanced to the quarter-final round by a perfectly executed free kick. We won even with two of my players randomly collapsing on the field due to “Black Magic”. (… sigh). No joke 20 minutes into the match my goalie just falls over complaining of pulsing pain in the back of the head, but he’s able to get up and grit through the rest of the game a few minutes later. Then at the end of the first half my left defender keels over to the ground screaming in agony, yet he wasn’t near anyone to make any sort of collision. He began tossing and turning in the sand exclaiming that his body was “extremely hot” as if his very blood stream was circulating molten lava; as well as abdominal pain that he said felt like an anvil. I rationally attempted to have the situation explained to me but was told that I “wouldn’t understand… this is a black man’s curse, African sorcery.” They went on to tell me that the opposing team must have paid a ‘Maraboo’, a Gambian shaman if you will, to cast a spell upon our team so that it’s players would begin to burn up and not be able to play. My defender began to stand up all of a sudden, drunkenly stating he was fine but he was obviously delirious. Attempting to reduce the already rapidly spreading hysteria among my team I urged a few of the older men to keep him down or take him somewhere else. We walked back to the locker room and I gave my usual inspiring halftime speech over the gut wrenching cries of my cursed outside defender. The game ended and both players seemed to miraculously feel better. Whether that was because of the coursing adrenaline from the win or the curse wearing off, who knows. As a scientist I’d love to discredit the entire event medically, but a piece of me still thinks it’s pretty fun to believe in magic. What would life be like after all without the romantic lure of the supernatural, that enchanting thirst to explore the unexplained. *X-Files theme plays in background*
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