Ramblings: Still A Meat-Head Football Player

In a previous blog I mentioned my connection to Gallinanda United the local football club, now I want to talk about how playing football(soccer to us Americans, and bola to Northern Malawians, but I’ll stick to football since I already used it in the title) is actually very important to my peace corps service. It sounds ridiculous, I know, playing football as an important aspect of development in a community where the problems range from food insecurity to the effects of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, but hear me out. Being a part of Gallinanda United has helped my community integration enormously. With Gan United I have found a strong sense of belonging, and thus a sense of confidence in the community, making me far more effective in everything I do. Gan United is idolized in this small African village, which can be useful in making a positive impact in all aspects of life in Mwazisi. By encouraging the players to take being a role model serious, there is a tremendous opportunity to steer Mwazisi’s youth in a positive direction. I am a firm believer in the power of sports, and its ability to bring a community together. So for me Gan United is not only an opportunity to have another group of close friends to run and compete with, but it’s an opportunity to influence and work with a group of young men that are icons for a whole village’s youth.

I first encountered Gan United while I was on my site visit during training. I crossed through their practice field on my way to meet my new landlord. I chatted with some of the guys about football, explaining that I had never actually played back in the states. It’s shocking to a Malawian, that a boy could have a childhood without bola. I joked that it would be their duty when I returned to teach me how to play. I was surprised when after only a week of living in the village they started coming up to me asking why I hadn’t been coming to soccer training. “I don’t want to get in the way” I would reply, “I really don’t know how to play bola.” But they were persistent, “No no, your physique shows that you will be a striker. We’ll teach you.” But, when I first did show up to practice I lived up to my promise; whiffing completely on many balls, and when I did connect, the ball never went in the planned direction. It was a very humbling experience to say the least, with roars of laughter coming from the ewes on the sideline every time I tried to make a play on the ball. But the guys from the team kept encouraging me, always smiling with me, and saying “Ah, you see? You’re coming up now.” I wasn’t coming up anywhere, but at least I was sharing laughs with the villagers for the first time.

I immediately saw how important the football team is to the village. Long before I could understand much of any Chitumbuka, I would recognize the names of the star players mixed into the excited conversations of young ewes, “Shanti na Gifti this and that” or “Monday na Junior something-or-other.” The first home game I saw really brought the communities support for Gan United to light for me. The rest of the village must have been empty, because practically everybody I know was at the pitch and fully engaged in the match. The team even has its own football hooligans who come dressed in flamboyant scarves and hats to march around the pitch belting out cheers and songs at the top of their lungs all the while doing some serious booty dancing. When Gan scored their first goal I was surprised to see that it wasn’t just the players running around hugging each other, but it was like the whole crowd lost their minds. Everybody charged the field, over two hundred hands must have touched the goal scorer’s back before he reached mid field, old men could be seen high stepping across the field with canes raised in the air, I saw ewes doing something between Kung Fu and break dancing, and this was just about five minutes into the game. After seeing all of this I knew this was something I wanted to be a part of, despite being probably the worst bola player in Malawi.

Ironically, the morning of my first road trip with the team turned out to be the same day one of my best friends and high school football teammate’s was getting married back in Colorado. So I woke up well before dawn to climb the mountain where I get cell phone network, so that I could talk to my old football teammates before I went on a road trip with my new football teammates (Sunday morning here is Saturday night there, so I caught them in the middle of the reception). It was surreal sitting on a mountaintop in the Malawian bush talking to my buddies who were busy celebrating the first marriage of the bunch. I must say it was tough knowing that I was missing it, but they made me feel better by picking up right where we left off, giving me my usual fair share of abuse, telling me that they had already shared some of my stupider stories. But they all also made sure to let me know that I was missed at the wedding. I pictured them all with drinks in their hands around my Mom’s cell phone, beating on each other and laughing the way we always have. I definitely had a smile on my face as I rushed down the mountain to catch the team’s transport to Laveli for Gan United’s match against the heavily funded and well-equipped Eva Demaya Squad.

It turned out to be a great trip. The B team won their match 2-1 and the A team managed to pull out a tie 2-2, despite at least half our guys playing barefoot. This is a big feat because the Eva Demaya squad is sponsored by a Dutch health center in the area, so they have brand new boots and top-notch equipment, which draws in ringers from all the surrounding villages. Tying a team with so many advantages is worthy of celebration so the matola ride back was the best part of the trip. The team was dancing and singing pilled in the back of the big truck not having an inch to spare with all of the traveling supporters. Everybody was huddled together drunk on the excitement from the game, and maybe the packets of sugar cane alcohol some of the guys stashed in their boot bags. Guys were falling all over each other as we flew over bumps, but everybody was singing at the top of their lungs and laughing the whole way. At one point I heard my name mentioned in one of the songs, but didn’t catch the context since the Chitumbuka was drowned out by the whirling wind as we flew down a hill, but I could tell it was good from the whistles, smiles, and thumbs up I got from everybody around me.

We got back late, but I couldn’t sleep. I found myself thinking of all the different teams I have been a part of over the years, and the good friends made along the way. A month before I came here to Malawi I was dancing and singing at the Boulder Rugby Season end formal. I arrived to this fine gathering wearing a 70’s tux and my date fellow former rugger Leslie Pickard sported a lion costume. The whole thing culminated in the entire team doing the can-can to Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York” with our pants around our ankles. Before that I was stomping around the world with the Montana Jesters rugby club. I was lucky enough to play with this rare breed of gentlemen everywhere from Scotland to Humboldt California. My time with them was short, but the memories are abundant, and the Jesters will always have a big place in my heart wherever they all happen to be scattered around the world.

Before taking up rugby I was a Montana Grizzly, where I saw how sports can bring a community together in a very special way. One of my most memorable experiences in sports was our National Championship run my senior year. The buzz and excitement around Missoula was infectious, as we advanced through the playoffs to the championship. I will never forget the parade through Missoula as we were bussed to the airport to depart for the Championship game in Chattanooga Tennessee. The streets were lined with people waving anything silver and maroon they could get their hands on. Lawyers hanging out the windows of office buildings had signs saying “We Believe!” The local transients were in the street pumping their fist at the bus as they demanded “Go get ’em Griz.” I remember Fathers with their sons on their shoulders squinting through the tinted windows of our bus trying to catch a glimpse of Craig Ochs or Johnny Verona. As we passed the lumber yards and rail depot on East Broadway you could see the hope for victory on the faces of our most devoted fans, the common working men and women of Missoula. Some of the workers even ran a train engine alongside our bus as they danced on its platforms to our fight song which was blaring over speakers attached to the sides of the train. I felt so proud to be a part of what all these people were coming together to support, and I will never forget that feeling.

But before Montana, I was playing with the same guys giving me hell on the phone earlier that same morning before I went with Gan United to the Eva Demaya match. The guys I used to play football with in my hometown Broomfield Colorado. We used to dance and sing cheesy songs on our way back from winning a cross-town game against Brighton or Skyview. The same way Gan United was singing old Timbuka songs on the way back from Eva Demaya. It’s funny that I’m halfway around the world in the heart of Africa, where sometimes I feel like I have been born into a completely different reality, but I still find moments that mirror so closely my other life back in America. I may be a bleeding heart liberal volunteering in one of the world’s poorest countries, but it seems no matter where in the world I go, I fall in with the same kind of meat-head jock crowd I always have.

Aside from finding a good group of friends, I see Gan United as an opportunity to make my impact in Mwazisi more effective. As I said before, I am a strong believer in the power of sports to mobilize a community, I would love to see the same type of excitement I saw in Montana about the Griz develop here in Mwazisi about Gan United. Mwazisi already idolizes this team, but by helping Gan United keep improving we can give Mwazisi something to really get excited about, and encourage a sense of community pride. Most people in Mwazisi talk about someday leaving it to live somewhere like Blantyre or Mzuzu. If people don’t see themselves or their children living in Mwazisi ten years from now then they can’t be serious about doing any work to improve the area’s future. People need to have pride in their home village, if they are going to think about its future and development. Football is just another way to encourage the people of Mwazisi to come together and have that sort of pride in their homeland, which would encourage them to look after all aspects of its future.

Given my bola aptitude playing and coaching won’t be my role of strengthening the team (although I do play on the B-squad every now and again, mostly for everybody else’s entertainment, and I had my Mom send a copy of “A Complete Idiot’s Guide to Playing Soccer,” so I’m still not counting myself out of coaching) but the team has adopted me as an unofficial manager. Managing Gan United is an opportunity to help them start income generating activities, like a team vegetable garden or tree nursery to raise money for equipment or transport to matches. I can also make efforts to help them find connections with teams in the U.K. or America able to donate old boots or uniforms. I can help them to organize more matches and find tournaments, the more games they play, the more opportunity there is for the buzz I’m looking for to develop.

I also have my selfish reasons for managing Gan United. It is very useful to have the village idols at your disposal and I plan to use them to encourage fundamental changes in the communities mind set. For example tree planting is a very big part of what I’m trying to do in Mwazisi as an environmental extension volunteer. I already have tree nurseries established, and spend a great deal of my breath preaching the value of planting good agro-forestry trees to develop soil fertility, prevent soil erosion, and bring up the water table. Most of my efforts are answered with encouraging words from most everybody in the community; they assure me that they understand the importance of planting trees. But this seems to be all lip service, because as trees are cut down by literally everybody for firewood, building, or farming, I have only seen a hand full of individuals who are making substantial efforts to replace them.

Around Gan United’s pitch there are few trees, disappearing vegetation, and signs of erosion. This is also a central and high traffic location in the community where everybody could see the benefits of planting the right trees. My Mom (being the saint that she is) has already sent two beautiful brand new balls for the team, which were badly needed since the old one was patched, tattered and certainly on its last leg. But instead of just passing the balls to the team, I promised to pass them only in exchange for the teams help in planting agro forestry trees around the border of the field. If the work the team does ends up improving the land around the field then it can serve as a great example, that lends merit to my preaching. Even more importantly if a young boy sees his hero football player planting and taking care of trees, then he is far more likely to do the same in the future.

Another idea has to do with volunteer AIDS testing in Mwazisi. As I am sure many of you know AIDS is a problem of epidemic proportions here in Malawi. Out of a population of about 12.3 million about one million people are currently living with HIV or AIDS. This number is growing all the time because most of the people who live with AIDS don’t realize that they have it. For that reason free volunteer testing and counseling clinics are set up all over the country. One such clinic exists in Mwazisi, but after meeting with the nurses that run the center I realized how seldom it actually gets used; this is due to the cultural taboos attached to sex and AIDS in Malawi. Nobody goes for volunteer testing because it is equated to admitting to taking part in risky behavior, which might mean pre-marital sex, sleeping with prostitutes, or being unfaithful to one’s partner, any of which would obviously bring disgrace to a villager. This all applies to my connection with Gan United because the team is constantly telling me how badly they are in need of new jerseys. If I am able to find a new set of Jerseys for the team, or help them to raise the money they need to buy their own, I would do it only on the condition that we organize a day when we all go publicly for volunteer testing while wearing the team’s new jerseys. It’s something small, but at least it’s chipping away a bit at the social stigma.

My association with Gan United can be useful for countless reasons. It helps me to become integrated with the community and feel more comfortable in the work I do here. This team could also be something the whole community can rally around, and working with them gives me access to individuals who are much more influential in the village than I could ever be. Most of all, it’s just nice to be a part of a team, and have the same type of friendships here with my teammates that I have had at every other stage of my life in every other place that I have lived.