Sports!

I have discovered to my delight that the local secondary school soccer league plays on Wednesday evenings at the pitch near my house. I first saw them last week, and since they were there last night too it must be a regular thing.
Last Wednesday when I got off the daladala and started walking down the Dubya Road as I always do, I was distracted by the sight (and sound) of a large crowd behind on the other side of the maize field cheering about something...
Hmm, maybe a digression is in order:

A daladala is a cheap, packed, and frankly dangerous minibus. They're on all the main roads, and are my main form of transportation after walking. I must remember to dedicate a whole post to the daladala experience later on.
The Dubya Road is obviously just a name I made up for the road that goes North from the Arusha-Moshi highway and eventually past my house. If it even has a real name, it's probably just "Meru Hospital Road" or something like that. But I've christened it after the ex-President of the US because the first kilometre or so of it was originally built for his visit to Tanzania a few years ago. He was scheduled to come see the hospital (which is maybe 500m from the highway), and the government decided that their distinguished visitor couldn't be driven there on the existing rutted, rocky dirt road. So they paved a stretch up to the first intersecting path. All well and good, I suppose, though certainly extravagant - there are schools here that don't even have desks... So anyway, the secret service showed up to do their standard recon before the big guy's arrival. They looked around, saw the direct view from the terraced foothills to the road, and visions of sniper-fire danced in their heads. So Bush was driven to the hospital along a presumably very bumpy backroad, and probably never even saw or heard of the newly paved and ditched street. A strange tale.

So where was I? Ah yes, walking down the road last Wednesday. The aforementioned maize had just been cut and the field plowed on the weekend, so this was the first time that I'd had a good view of the pitch from the road at this time of day. My attention was drawn by the shouts, but it took me a second to figure out what the gathering was all about. When I saw a soccer ball sail through the air behind the crowd, my Holmes-ian skills kicked into gear, though, so I went to check out the match. It was high-school aged boys playing to a crowd of at least 300 people, most of whom were still in their school uniforms.
It took me a bit of time and questioning in both English and garbled Kiswahili, but I eventually discovered that it was a match between Tengeru Boys' Secondary School (wearing yellow jerseys and cheered on by fans in grey and green), and Duluti Secondary (blue and white supporters). Duluti wore red, but while Tengeru's shirts were proper matching jerseys, theirs were just mismatched red tshirts.
The pitch itself is in pretty rough shape; dirt patches, no lines, and I think the only mowing is done by machete (maybe), and goat (definitely). [Those who are disappointed that this site has turned into "Robin Blogs About Goats Dot Com" can skip ahead to the next paragraph.] I know for sure that goats are involved in the upkeep of the field because that they are so dedicated that they were still there working as the game went on. Half a dozen of them stuck stubbornly to their pasture and grazed obliviously at one end of the field. So the teams just played around them. Actually, I think I was the only one who found the whole scene remarkable; the athletes played around and through with no obvious break in concentration, and the crowd made to real effort to herd the animals away. The animals were occasionally startled by a ball landing in their midst or a player dribbling between them, but would soon go back to eating (looking slightly indignant, in my opinion).
The game itself was pretty good, at least to my inexpert eyes. The boys had good skills: smart and accurate passes, fancy footwork, and the game had pretty good flow. You could tell that these guys' spare time is all spent kicking a ball around, practicing and showing off.
It's been a million years since I last saw high-schoolers play, but I'd be willing to bet that either team could beat or at least hold their own against any similarly aged Canadian comp team (especially Duluti, the red team. They were better than Tengeru). Regardless, it was really really fun to watch - fast-paced and entertaining. But the really cool thing for me was just the atmosphere and the fans.
The spectators were loosely segregated, with each school's supporters taking one side and one goal end each. And good golly were they into it. When Duluti lined up for a penalty kick, Tengeru fans raced across the field and massed themselves behind and around the net to the point that the ref had to herd them into an acceptable, non-disruptive formation. When Duluti missed, there was absolute jubilation from the green-and-greys. But there must have been something wrong with the penalty (don't ask me...maybe the goalie stepped forward too soon?) Duluti were awarded a re-kick: pandemonium. The blue-and-whites hoorayed, and the Tengeru students stormed the field to argue their case to the ref. Of course then the Duluti kids had to have their share of the yelling, so they came onto the field...you get the picture. The ref was an old pro, though, and had quickly sorted it out and cleared the pitch. Duluti missed their second shot anyway.
But when Duluti did eventually score, on another penalty kick, it was total madness! Their fans stormed the pitch, dancing, cheering, cartwheeling (seriously), and hugging the players. I even saw one guy on his knees, genuflecting to the scorer. All this happened again with Duluti's second goal, and at the end of the match.
I've spent a lot of time in sports crowds, especially smaller, non-commercial ones like this, and it was cool to try to identify the similarities and differences between these crowds and ones in Canada. I don't know if I gleaned any deep cultural insights, but it was interesting all the same.
Yesterday it was different teams, same goats. I think I must have just never noticed the games before because of the maize and the fact that Tengeru's so noisy anyway.
This game wasn't as good and didn't keep my interest beyond halftime, but it had its moments. I had a lively debate with the guy next to me about the accuracy of a foul called on the blue team: I argued that it was a clean play and that the red man had tripped on his own and played up the fall for effect, while he felt it was a fair call against a dirty bit of cheating. Or at least that's what I think we were talking about. I was speaking English and him Kiswahili, so in truth he could just as well have been asking me if I've ever worked for the Mongolian foreign service. I still say the tackle was clean, though.