The invitation was hand written: 

Dear Sir,
You are cordially invited with pleasure to our anniversary disco jam and football match.  Please make it a point of duty to come.
Thankyou your youth leader
Midewa Koroma

It was 4pm.  Humity was hovering at 85%.  We had just arrived on the uninhabited island of Tiwai to track hippos, monkeys and snakes.  We were a touch surprised.  And scared.

In England football unites and divides. Your team is your father’s team, the team you saw as a boy, the team whose shirt you wore on your fifth birthday.  You might never have touched a football, but you are still an Aston Villa fan. And always will be.  Till the day you die.

In West Africa, it is different.  You support Chelsea, Arsenal, Manchester United or Liverpool.  If you are brave (or Senegalese) you might support Barcelona or Real Madrid.  But for most people it is one of the big four.  And they know all the players, the tactics and the soundbites that come from having John Motson on your TV fifteen hours a week. 

And they play.  Everybody plays. At 5pm all over West Africa people converge on dusty rectangles of land to run their hearts out, chasing the dreams of the television replays and set manoeuvres. Barefoot, in brogues, in jelly shoes, with one shoe strapped to their kicking foot. No excuses of having left your PE kit behind.  Just get out there and play.  And don’t stop until you are half-dead.  Muscles are pulled, referees sworn at, and the red earth runs with sweat as the fittest bodies in the country exhaust themselves.

So it was with trepidation that I tucked my belly into my shorts, pulled on my hiking socks, bid farewell to the others (off on an evening boat trip) and took a small boat to the village football pitch. My travelling companion was Eric, who informed me that he had just finished his contract with Blackpool and returned to Sierra Leone to complete his studies.  I made a mental note to ensure I was on Eric’s team.

The pitch was hard.  The ball was harder. The players milling around the goal were tall and skinny.  I did a keepy-uppy.  Everybody was watching. My shoe fell off and I pulled an unknown muscle in my bum.  When had I last played football?  Seven months ago.  Before sitting in a car for 11 weeks.

I avoided the throng practicing corners and faked some stretches.  Eric was talking about Arsenal’s season strategy with a player wearing Paisley pattern socks and brown brogues.   The club captain came up to me.  The visiting team had failed to show so the match is between the village and people from Tiwai Island. Twenty people against me and Eric.  I laughed too loudly.  Don’t worry, he said, you will have the children with you.

Eric made it through to the end of the first half.  The Blackpool he had played for was not the faded Lancastrian seaside town. It was a small suburb of northern Freetown.  And he was only in the squad.  The children on the other hand were remarkably good.       

Their football is unlike anything I had encountered.  Cross tennis with middle distance running and Aussie rules football and you having something approximating the sweatiest 90 mins of my life.  You get the ball, you swing your leg and you conk it as hard as possible in the direction of the goal.  Then you run after it.  By the time you get to the ball somebody else has just unleashed a monster boot in the opposite direction.  So you turn around and chase back. Ad infinitum. 

I would love to say I stood in the middle of the pitch and directed play through careful positioning and the soft threaded pass.  But that would ignore the five miles I ran with my head down chasing the elusive ball.  Occassionally our paths would cross and I would coil up my leg and let fly, emit a loud cackle and gallop onwards.   

At one point a swarm of our players edge close enough to the goal to bundle the ball over the line.  But this was soon countered by a similar event at the other end of the pitch.
After 90 minutes I had a dead leg, heartburn, and enough sweat in my shoes for them to squelch.  Who had won.  Who cared.  We were all knackered and slapped each other on the back in congratulations.  One of my team came up and said: ‘You have small leg but strong foot’. 

I have never felt so proud. 

Next month we are heading to visit the Keta Sandlanders for some serious soccer.  Any tips welcome.

Next blog: Disco Jam – how to lose friends and alienate people.

Comments	Leave a comment
Name: Daphne Why not suggest a game of Frisbie instead?