Machakos journalist
receives award in Sydney
Steffany Ndei was today feted in an event in Australia after emerging among top three global writers.
The Anchor now brings you the Award Winning Story as written and published.
FOOTBALL,
BLOODY HELL.
By
Steffany W. Ndei.
I. The origin of my villain story.
The only reason I went
unnoticed while watching the 2008 AFCON semi-finals between Ghana and Egypt was
that my father and his brothers were deeply engulfed in conversation about
politics in the country. On a normal day, I would have been asked to change the
TV station to the 9 O'clock news and shooed away to go help the maid in
cleaning up the dinner dishes.
I was lucky that a football
match was showing even- because no one in that household really cared about the
game and it was only showing because the commentary was a sensible backdrop to
the polemical discussion going on among the adults in the room. Football was
such a scarce sight in the room that that particular match was the first game I
ever watched at 14 years old, despite being obsessed with it years before that.
My interest in football had
gone surprisingly unnoticed by my parents because they had no interest in
football at all, not in their daughter. I was, after all, doing well in school
albeit experiencing the atypical discipline problems any “tomboy” girl would,
such as fighting with boys.
Had my father known the impact
this one game had on me, he probably would have chosen Cartoon Network to play
during the discussion. Ironically, despite being so nonchalant about football,
he had been to the World Cup in 2002 as the leader of the Boy Scouts in Kenya.
He came back with a football, a gift to my brother, but I was the one who
enjoyed the gift more, kicking the ball against the wall when none of my
neighbours was up for a kick about.
Thanks to the football
grapevine in school, where lads would debate all matches from the EPL to the
AFCON with the punditry prowess of Gary Lineker and Neville, I knew who to
watch out for in the match. Junior Agogo. In hindsight, even if I did not have
any idea who to root for, I still would have chosen Agogo’s team because, by my
14-year-old standards, I found him to be one hell of a gorgeous human being.
After the match, I was keen to
join the boys in school to discuss the game with them, hone my debate and oratory
skills and to swear by Agogo’s name that Ghana deserved to win (even though I
would not disclose my attraction to Agogo). However, that did not go to plan.
According to them, I had no business discussing football with boys and there
was no way I would say anything sensible. So everything I said or tried saying
was ignored just like my father and his brothers ignored the game that shaped
my life.
The Ghana vs Egypt game had
awakened all sorts of fires in me. Much as I wanted to be heard during the football
discussions, I yearned to corner people, like Agogo, and to take them on. I
wanted to be part of a team. The only place I would play with anyone was in
school; with the boys who bugged me off from their punditry exploits.
I caved to my temptations one
day and asked to join them. I was so sure I would not be the worst on the
pitch, and even if I were, I would have fun while at it. They played with a
paper ball and I asked the most popular lad if I could join. He was popular,
thankfully, because he was the smartest in class and not because he was a
bully.
“You want to play? Are you
sure?”
“Yep!”
“Well, join Benjamin’s team…”
he said.
There was no time to know who
my teammates were. I knew Benjamin but I did not know his teammates (there was
no way to figure that out because the lads played in their school uniforms).
Break time was only 30 minutes and the whole field was full of kids (mostly
boys) chasing paper balls. It was like every class had a paper ball and it is
incredible that 20 games of football were going on on the field at the same
time!
“Benjamin, I am on your team,
Timo has told me to play for your team!” I yelled to Benjamin who was
concentrating on the game, trying not to lose sight of the paper ball
affiliated with our class.
“OK, you will be the
goalkeeper…” Benjamin said. “I was goalkeeper, but I’ll be the last man.”
Any role would do, I just
wanted to play. Soon, we were defending my goal line. It turned out, Timo had
put me on the weak team and Benjamin, who was always deployed as the goalkeeper
because he was the fat kid, had found someone to relieve him of his fat-kid
duties.
The ball was kicked towards me
and my teammates yelled at me to catch the ball with my hand as I was the
goalkeeper. Word had travelled fast that I was the new signing. I had a dress
on and so had an advantage, especially as a goalkeeper, because I would stretch
my legs and nothing would go between them. In essence, nutmegging me was
impossible. I, however, did not handle the ball with my hands, I dribbled past
two opponents and hurled the ball away to whomever it concerned.
“How can a girl dribble past
you?” Yelled one of Timo’s teammates.
Benjamin was clapping his
hands. I was staying true to my mission of not being the worst on the pitch and
having fun while at it.
The game ended goalless. After
break time, the lads talked about my performance and Timo gave a talking down
to his teammates for letting a girl dribble past them and not scoring against
me. Others said I only got lucky because I had a dress on. Benjamin and my
mates, happy that we did not concede, did not care about the means that got us
a draw against the team that apparently beat them day in and day out. If having
a dress was the recipe for shithousery, so be it, but it did not justify that
they lost to a team with a girl.
Since then, I wore shorts under
my dress and changed during break time because I did not want to give anyone
the satisfaction that my dress gave me superpowers. I had the same colour of
shorts as the lads, just in case a teacher decided to inspect the field of play
in search of a truant football-obsessed girl. I also had short hair but in
retrospect, I was overly careful to be noticed since no teacher would spot me
on a field with 20 paper balls with kids of all ages going berserk.
School finally had meaning. I
dreaded the national exams that determined which high school I would be
deployed to and I changed my ambitions- much to my father’s dismay- from being
an astronaut to being a footballer. I just wanted to play.
At home, I found an allegiance
of kids who were football mad. I had found my tribe and we found an open space
in between buildings, to play in. We named it Anfield because there was a
“Wembley” in a different neighbourhood. My interest in football was no longer
because of circumstances such as my dad bringing a football gift or because I
loved listening to boys debate about the best goal of the weekend in school; it
was because I chose to play football and I was apparently very good at it.
ii. Play your football and give me my
grades
It was in high school that the
football obsession got my parents riled up. I was in an all-girls boarding
school. My parents had hoped I would outgrow my liking for the sport and I
would at least start “behaving like a girl.” Even though I was in a private
school where my schoolmates chose to keep their nails long over playing a game,
I still found time to play. Being the games captain did not do much to douse
the obsession, for I had access to where the balls were stored and I could, as
I often did, get the ball and played as I did at home- kick it against the
wall.
Because I had no discipline
problems and I played during the appropriate time, the teachers let me play.
During important fixtures such as the 2010 World Cup Final, I was allowed to
watch the game with other teachers in the dining hall. However, back at home,
the rift with my parents because of my obsession with football was haunting me.
While I looked forward to
school holidays because it meant I did not have to wake up at 5 am, stick to
tasteless diets, wear the same clothes and adhere to mundane routines, I
loathed being home for the holidays because it meant I could not watch and play
football. My father was the law, saying I was not allowed to go out and play
football and my mother was the court, enforcing the law and beating me up
whenever I erred.
Even though I was recognized as
the best footballer in school at the annual prize-giving ceremony, my parents
wished I was honoured for my brains rather than my brawn. In form three, just
one year before the final high school national exams which determined the
course I would study at the university and whether I would qualify for a government
scholarship, my grades took a hit. Because of that, I was suspended from school
and asked to return with my father.
“Why are your grades not
reflecting your potential, Steffany?” Asked Mr Alex, the school principal.
I was not home, at home. I felt
like an outcast wherever I was because even though I could play football in
school, it was never like playing football with my chosen tribe at Anfield.
“It’s because of my dad,” I
said.
“What do you mean?” Mr Alex
probed.
“He won’t let me play
football,” I said.
Mr Alex chuckled. My father was
silent, perhaps out of embarrassment more than concern.
“If he lets you play, will your
grades improve?” Mr Alex asked
“Yes, it’s not that I play
during class. I play when I do not have class scheduled or when I have finished
all my assignments,” I said.
“Well, is that all you want?”
my father interrupted.
I nodded in affirmation. I
still could not look him in the eye.
“Well, as long as you give me
my grades, you can play your football,” he said.
I wanted to say “say no more,
dad.” But I figured I would rather put my money where my mouth was. From that
day, a silent pact was signed with my father, I could play football as long as
I did well in school.
I passed the national exams,
getting a grade that earned me the government scholarship to university. The
admission board, which decided the course one was fit to study, admitted me to
study sociology. I was 18 and felt that I had paid my dues with my parents. I
had little reserve for university education as I had my sights set on a career
in professional football.
Little did I know that boarding
school and a shelter at home had shielded me from the harsh realities of
playing football in Kenya or really, any other place in the world, especially
as a woman.
iii. “Just how good is she?”
There was a new regime at the helm
of Kenya’s democracy. Much as their victory on the ballot was controversial
because of the crimes against humanity charges they faced at the Hague, Kenyans
felt they had flipped off the west by electing the very candidates the West
advised against. The regime under Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto hit the
ground running. One of their programs was to set up a National Youth Talent
Academy which I benefited from.
There was a try-out in all 47
counties in Kenya and I was selected to benefit from the football academy after
successfully appeasing the scouts in my home county, Machakos. Fresh from high
school, I knew this was the right path to go if at all I wanted to play for the
women’s national team.
At the camp, I was with kids
about my age and younger, all of who had made it at the try-out. I went back to
a high school routine- waking up early, sticking to a timed eating schedule but
unlike school where I had to endure Physics lessons, I was going through
football drills. I loved it. If this was what I had to go through to be as big
as Ronaldo, I was going to give my all.
Even though I was the stand-out
athlete in high school and in my hometown, this academy opened my eyes to a
different world of girls who were disgustingly good. I knew right away that I
had work cut out for myself not just because I was tiny in stature but because
kicking a ball against the wall did not help my tactical understanding of the
game. What is more, most of my mates at the academy came from a lower social
class and were there not just because they were good at football but also
because they had no other means of climbing out of their social status. To
them, football was not just the means but the end. They had backing from their
parents to play football because they had seen players like Dennis Oliech and
Mike Origi (Divock Origi’s father) climb out of the slums because of the game.
And so we played. At the pitch,
the only thing that separated us was the skills and knowledge of the game. I
did not want them to think I was a pushover - a kid who bribed their way into
the academy. And I knew the proletarian revolution would manifest in that
setting. I had no business, as a kid who had gone to a private school,
dominating their territory.
We earned (or were supposed to)
a monthly allowance of 3000 Kenya shillings. At the time, it was equivalent to
30 USD. The academy honoured the allowance for the first month but we earned
nothing in the next months. It was meant to be a three-month excursion and so
in the final months, the coaches who were also victims of the unpaid allowance
stopped showing up, we had no food at the academy and we only stayed because we
had the copa-cola tournament to honour. It was during that tournament that my
father got a glimpse of my talent. Or heard about it.
There were scouts at each phase
of the tournament- the lowest being the zonal stage and the highest being the
national stage- who selected the best players to advance to the national stage.
At the academy, thanks to the pool of talent we had, most of us advanced to the
next stages without struggle and we dominated every match we played in. It was
in the provincial stage, the level just before the national stage, that we lost
some of my teammates. I was selected to represent my province on the national
stage, alongside the kids who had played ball in the same slums of Nairobi that
have nurtured Kenya’s greats such as McDonald Mariga and Victor Wanyama. It was
such a huge feat that when my dad received the call about my selection, he
asked; “just how talented is she?”
The top performers on the
national stage were called up to the national team. Even though I did not make
it, the Copa Cola tournament opened doors for me to play in clubs in Nairobi.
My hometown was in Machakos, 54 km from the capital of Nairobi. Any serious
football- let alone women’s football was played in Nairobi, and I understood
convincing my parents to let me play football in Nairobi would be bootless. The
only way I would step foot in Nairobi, unsupervised, would be if I was going to
school.
Iv.
This Football Thing
My mother, albeit enforcing the
rules of my father, had softened her heart to my exploits. Thanks to having a
shop in Machakos town located where most footballers and football fans went,
she had heard of my prowess. Most of them convinced her to feed me saying I was
really good but very skinny. She also bore most of the brunt when I came home
dirty, spent or injured. She became so accustomed to it that she could tell
when I was coming from a game we had lost. It was emotionally tasking for her
to listen to me vent about unpaid allowances and how a coach taunted me for
playing for another team (even when I was not contractually bound to play for a
specific club.)
“What do you think you can make
out of this football, Wangari?” she asked, one day.
“I want to play in Europe or
the USA,” I said.
“And then what? Where will this
football take you?”
“I don’t know mum, people
become coaches when they retire. I could be like Sir Alex Ferguson.”
She did not know who Sir Alex
Ferguson was but she knew I was deluded to think I would make a living out of
football. To her, football brought out the worst in me, because I always
complained about how there was dishonour among coaches and players and that it
made me so skinny that people thought she did not feed me. It was also making
me crude for I had become rash to my siblings, as players always are to referees.
It was, if anything, making me uncultured.
I yearned every day to get a
breakthrough to play abroad. I signed up for academies that played their
tournaments in Scandinavian countries but I could not keep up with the
commuting demands from Machakos to Nairobi to honour the training sessions or
the matches. After hearing enough about my heroics, and enduring my groans and
moans about football in Nairobi or Machakos, my mother decided to help find a
way out of the rogue football situation in Kenya and asked a relative to apply
for college in the USA.
I got admission but the tuition
fees were so expensive that my parents had to fundraise to pay for the first
semester. The goal was to have me try out for colleges that would give me a
scholarship. I tried out for Grand View University in Iowa and earned a
scholarship, albeit a half scholarship.
I was en route to being the
biggest star in women’s football, if not in the world, at least in Kenya.
But something happened to my
psyche while I was playing in Iowa. At the peak of my football career, I felt
empty. It felt like I was burnt out from trying too hard in Kenya. I had
foregone the government scholarship, my agemates were just graduating with
their bachelor's degrees, I was 23 years old, the oldest in the college team
and here I was, chasing a dream that my mates in Iowa saw no need nor future
in.
Unlike the kids I played with
in Machakos or Nairobi, my teammates in the USA were just playing football for
the sake of playing. None had grand dreams of becoming Messi. Few cared about
European football and their priorities were miles different from mine. The
existential crisis of being in the land of opportunity with no end in sight for
my struggles created a dissonance so great that I lost any purpose of playing
football.
The presence of mind I had when
I realised the kids at the academy played football because it was their bread
and butter occurred to me again and I remembered my mother’s words.
“What will this football thing help you with?”
I played with and against the
best footballers in my life in the USA. But that they were not professional footballers,
got to me. What is worse, I could only think of two women footballers who had
at least a successful career from Kenya. What if I do not make it? Heck, do I
even want to make it? Do I want to be a professional footballer?
Also, why did I have to travel
miles away from home to realise this dream? Why can I not achieve this dream in
Kenya? And why are the kids who only have football to save them from damnation
damned to live in Kenya? Can I make a difference by being a footballer? How? If
anything, my life in Iowa brought out a philosopher in me.
I remembered too, that it was
not football that had gotten me there. Perhaps my parents were right. Perhaps
this football thing was a waste of my
time. Were it not for my grades in high school, I would not have gotten
admission to a university in Iowa. If anything, my exploits in school had
opened more doors for me than this football
thing.
After one season, I went to my
head coach’s office and told him I was going back to Kenya. Before I did that,
I had talked to my parents about my decision and it might have felt like their
prayers were answered; that my football demons had been exorcised and I was
finally back to my senses.
“I just want to study,” I told
Ventsi, my coach.
“You know, how Americans
approach football is different from your culture and where I come from,” Ventsi
said. “If you were on the boys’ team, your experience would be different
because they have players from Europe.”
He was right that how Americans
had little reverence for soccer played a part in my falling out of love with
the game but there was a much bigger issue in play; what was this football thing going to do for me, after
all the sacrifices I made?
Ventsi tried convincing me to
stay, called a different college that offered me a full scholarship and gave me
some time to change my mind. The support from my parents strengthened my
resolve and I knew there was no going back for me. I booked my flight to Kenya,
said goodbye to my teammates and swore never to kick a ball in my life when I
went back home.
V. Food to my soul.
Two weeks after I arrived in
Kenya, I went to the local playground in Machakos. The kids in high school who
only played during the school holidays had graduated which meant they played
every day throughout the year. They had formed a team, Machakos Youth, and had
practice sessions every day of the week.
I watched them as they were
playing “el rondo” on the red soil with all the mirth and girth of most
innocent kids in Africa who believe they will be like Sadio Mane. I wept. It
was not the regret that I squandered a life-changing opportunity that weighed
on my heart. It was the realisation that the odds of them making it were against
them yet they still believed with all their hearts that they too, could be like
Victor Wanyama.
After a month of being a mere
onlooker, I found myself back on the pitch, this time not only playing but also
coaching the lads. I knew telling them to give up on their dreams because the
statistics were against them would yield nothing. From the experience with my
parents, no one exorcises that demon out of you, you exorcise it yourself by
living through it.
Out of the lads, we created an
unbeatable team in Machakos. I coached them while diligently going to
university. I transferred my credits from Iowa and enrolled in journalism
school. I had swapped priorities but decided that it was unrealistic to think
that I would never play football.
I learnt to eschew questions
about what happened in the USA and why I came back with nothing to show for it.
I turned down offers to play in the premier league and only played five-a-side
tournaments. It was only with Machakos Youth that I played association
football.
I was also mentally in the pits
after coming back. Heck, if I am being honest, I was mentally unwell when I
made the decision to stop playing college football. And so going back home to a
country that has very little to offer for its burgeoning youth only made things
worse. Yes, I went to class every day, and played football when I could but I
was empty inside and had no will to live.
What kept me alive was the life
in Machakos Youth. I looked forward to watching them play, coaching them and
playing with them. Most of the lads in that team only had football to save them
from a life of crime and addiction. In retrospect, I too, only had football to
save me. This football thing was
literally saving my life and keeping suicidal ideations at bay.
I kept my head down and let go of the possibilities of football
replenishing my coffers. It was no longer a means to me, it was an end and food
to my soul. I still play occasionally and like Drake raps, “I still love it but
I used to love it more.”
