Dal and David's First Once-in-a-Lifetime Adventure: Soccer Day in Ruhengeri

Soccer Day in Ruhengeri

As we’ve mentioned before, Rwanda has an extremely young population. This is partially explained by the genocide which killed many parents as well as the exorbitant number of babies born as a result of the mass rapes. Many of these children that don’t have parents wind up living on the streets. On Saturday, we met about 120 of these children

A few months ago, Cathy introduced a Saturday morning program to give these children some hope. Using a school a short walk away as a meeting point, she distributes bread, the sorghum/corn mixture and a bar of soap. The group, mainly boys, typically come a bit earlier in anticipation of Cathy’s arrival and pass the time by playing soccer on the rocky grounds.

We arrived at about 9am and were greeted by the group, consisting mainly of teenagers although not as affectionately as with the pre-schoolers. Cathy set up shop in a classroom with Dal and Brianne and a few of the older children helping make the liquid mixture and cutting the bread into thirds. Batches of 10 kids at a time were brought into the classroom to receive their portions and they sat at their desks and consumed their meals. Some of the other children waited against the wall to receive their invite into the classroom. Most of the older children however were engaged in a game of soccer. Ron, Cathy’s most trusted helper, served as referee and distributed pinnies to help identify teams. Ron gave me one of the pinnies and I was on the green/yellow team. As none of the kids spoke English aside from ‘Hello’ and ‘Thank You’ I racked my brain for names of African soccer players that I heard during the recent World Cup as a way to relate to them. “Nice pass Drogba !” “Good shot Eto”. I’ve found that handslaps, handshakes and smiles are also universal ways to break the ice. But the best way to win the kids over is to take photos. As soon as the camera comes out, a solo photo quickly becomes a group of 10 or more and all the children want to see the photo after it’s taken. Once they see their photo, they smile happily knowing they’ve been immortalized.

The soccer pitch was quite brutal as I almost turned my ankle twice on stones the size of a fist. All sorts of rocks were scattered all over the pitch but that didn’t deter the boys. Neither did their lack of appropriate footwear. Some of the kids only had flimsy sandals which would fly off after a particularly solid kick. Others actually played barefoot and I grimaced each time I saw them make contact with the ball or someone else’s foot.

Dal and I talked the footwear issue over with other volunteers and have decided to group together to purchase new sandals for each of the kids. They cost about $1.50 per pair, so if each of us contributes $50, we’ll be able to cover all the kids.

If any of the soccer fanatics reading this blog would be able to donate uniform tops or bottoms (used is perfectly fine) or anything else soccer related, please let me know and we can figure out how to make the arrangements.