Footballs

We played a heated road-side football game and gave away a One World Fooball in the village of Kainuk on the banks of the Turkwel river between Marich Pass and Lokichar. What started with a six a side quickly turned into a 20 a side game with the village looking on and cheering. During the game the football was kicked against thorn bushes and jagged rocks but survived without a scratch – a ball perfectly suited for the harsh environment of Northern Kenya. We ended up giving away two balls one of the kids and one for Adults.

Driving from Kitale towards Marich Pass, we passed a roadside football game being played on a dusty pitch surrounded by the impressive Cherangani Hills. The Africa Goal team took on the local team playing the first half of the 20 minute game with their home made football and the second half with a One World Futbol. After an an exhausting 5-0 defeat we traded an unpoppable One World Football with 14 year old Augustus for his carefully crafted ball made out of old plastic bags and sisal string. After a lot of cheering and laughter the game continued without FC Africa Goal who continued towards Marich with somewhat dented pride.

Hand crafted footballs or “Jualas” as they are locally called are usually made from discarded plastic bags. However, following the plastic bag ban in Kenya shops have started giving out reusable fabric bags rather than plastics. This has not stopped Fredrick Ogang from creating a football, this time made from worn out fabric shopping bags. After a short road side kick-about we traded a One World “Unpoppable” Futbol for his multicolored shopping bag creation.

Photos of some of the footballs we collected throughout East and Southern Africa as part of the “Trading Footballs” component of the Africa Goal project. The Africa Goal team trades genuine industry-standard footballs in exchange for locally hand-crafted footballs. These balls – made out whatever materials are easily available, including discarded plastic bags, fabric, string, wool, banana leafs, natural rubber, to name but a few – are a symbol of African creativity, a passion for football and ingenuity in the face of adversity. The fact that many people cannot afford to buy a football does not stop anyone from enjoying, and finding a way to play, the ‘beautiful game’. To date, the team have collected over 1000 unique hand-crafted footballs from ten different African countries – each with their own story. These footballs have been exhibited in galleries in the United States, Belgium, Israel, Kenya, Zimbabwe and South Africa. Among…

Name: Katesh Primary + Secondary School Location: Katesh, Tanzania Leaving Singida to reach Arusha, we passed Katesh school at morning break time and saw a number of groups of children playing with their homemade footballs in the school playground. We spoke to the Headmaster who was very excited about the project and welcomed the team in for a quick football match with the school team before class started again. Thankfully for the Africa Goal team, there was only limited playtime left for the school's team to show off their rather superior skills! After the match, we exchanged the handmade footballs for our donated oneworldfutbols and select handballs for the youngest children. The Headmaster was also pleased to receive a Nike football for use by the school - for a rural school with limited resources, having a proper football is a rarity. There was a surprising range of different handmade football...

Name: Blezi Age: 15 Location: Near Manyoyi, Tanzania Our next football trade took place after school, as a group of children were making there way home, playing with a homemade ball on their way. This was a quickfire trade, but we had a quick round of keepy-uppies with Blezi 15, before exchanging one of our One World Futbol balls with Blezi’s sky-blue and yellow plastic bag and string ball, and getting back on the road.

Name: Al-Hajji Age: 10 Location: Kigoyi, Tanzania Now on our way back to Nairobi, but still keen to continue the football trading arm of the project, we spied a roadside kickaround in Kigoyi and arranged a quick game. Al-Hajji, the 10-year-old who had crafted the ball from plastic and string, was the star of the show, scoring some excellent goals. Clearly his low centre of gravity was a big advantage (at least that’s what we told ourselves…) Al-Hajji was very pleased to receive a One World Futbol in exchange for his ball. The fact that it won’t be punctured by thorns gives him limitless opportunity to improve his skills – a frightening prospect should we revisit Kigoyi on the next trip in 2018.

Our next football trade was with a shopkeeper called Manmade, close to Nkata Bay, Malawi, on our way to screen the Portugal-Ghana game. The rubber trees in this area provide an abundance of crude rubber, a superb material for football-crafting. In exchange for a One World football, we received an expertly made rubber ball, very bouncy and fun to play with. The ball was built with a bladder inside, and then hundreds of long thin strips of rubber latticed on top. Manmade also showed us the seeds from which the rubber trees grow, and introduced us to his son outside his roadside shop.

Name: Elias Kiplagat Age: 13 Location: Kerio Valley, on the way to Eldoret “I made this ball out of plastic bags found on the road – we play every afternoon when it is not as hot….this is amazing! I had a real ball last year but it got punctured after two days.”

Name: Joseph Omondi Age: 12 Location: Just outside Rongo town, Western Kenya Joseph was thrilled to trade his homemade football constructed from layered plastic bags for a One World Futbol ‘almost indestructible’ ball – after the trade, he ran to catch up with his friends to show off his new ball and have a quick kickabout before school started: “Me and my friends play football on the way to school – it is our hobby – class starts in 10 minutes”