Football

It had been a rather quiet day, not too much going on and admittedly, I was bored. In the late afternoon two of the girls from my vocational school passed by my house (both of them called Akiiki - so goes it when there are twelve possible nicknames in a culture) and told me that all of the students were up playing football; come join.

Football - what a great game. It's so simple, the rules are easy and you can play just about anywhere. In American golf is the game of the elite and basketball the game of the lower classes. In the rest of the world, football is the game everyone plays, and indeed World Cup begins on Friday (the most watched sporting event in the world). Every village has a pitch, some with timbers demarcating the goals, others with rocks or jerri-cans. They're a type of village park and town commons (grazing the cattle here keeps the grass low, but makes navigating through the dung piles quite difficult).

The balls can be as cheap or expensive as your resources allow - black and white imports from Kenya or China, to plastic sacks bound together with banana fibre.

And here you don't "play football," instead you "kuzina omupira" - dance football.




A student from our vocational school out playing on our village pitch. The other students play behind.










Students from our vocational school, taking a break from the game.