Fairly ordinary day to start with – picking ants off
bread for breakfast (admittedly this is a new low in food hygiene), failing to
wash (again), walking for an hour and a half to town, and indulging my penchant
for ten kwacha roadside baked goods (today a kind of chewy potato/tomato/onion
maize flour fritter, and then a donut that is more like nice bread really, but
on the plus side, is a bit like nice bread). Also taking a bike taxi over some
slightly soggy dirt roads.
But then it got interesting – it was the day of the big
match, the first round of the national primary school football and netball cup,
the winning of which is worth 1.6 million kwacha (it’s 500 kwacha to the pound
so you can work out how much that is if you want). We were up against Chidampa
at Ergo ground. Ergo football pitch is half sand and half thick grass, thistles
and all. We were there just before kick-off time, 2:00pm. The opponents were
nowhere to be seen. Then it started raining torrentially, for the second time
that day. Our players and the smaller supporters who had tagged along found
what shelter they could but got extremely wet and cold in their shorts and
t-shirts. To keep warm they did some singing and dancing which any English
choir would have been proud, or possibly incapable, of. And then the rain
calmed down after an hour or so, and some Chidampo people arrived, and, to my
astonishment, we actually started playing.
The sheer Malawianess of the occasion is impossible to
describe – a kid wearing a hat woven from some grass and sticks, along with our
team’s kit – a random goalie shirt, then 9 identical ‘SAHA’ Man U kits in a
bring yellow that Man U have never even contemplated wearing, and for the
captain an Arsenal shirt with ‘FABREGAS’ on it, in the same unimaginable
yellow. The girls play netball in skirts and even faker Arsenal shirts. There
are no visible sidelines so older kids patrol the edges of the pitch wielding
big branches and smashing them down occasionally to discourage anyone from
standing where they are just about to be, and thus fend off the inward creep of
the crowd. The aforementioned crowd continues to shiver in the occasional
showers and bitingly cold wind – and it does cross my mind that this is
supposed to be Africa. A large group are keeping warm by dancing around the
edges of the pitch (in fact on the pitch at all points other than the actual
goals), chanting and clapping something that seems to have some relevance to
the game. And then we score. And there is a huge pitch invasion – mainly
conducted by five to ten year old kids about four foot tall – and I even see a
giant doll – about the size of the kid holding it – that seems to be our rather
inexplicable team mascot.
This happens after each of our four goals. It’s quite a
comedic game of football – players slipping and sliding wildly over the pitch
(it’s pretty tough playing football in a bog when no one has studs and in fact,
only about half are wearing shoes). It is, I must admit, even funnier when the
netballers slip over. And then it’s all over – 16-1 in the netball, 4-0 in the
football. So our fellow teacher and avid dictionary reader Mr Robins Kamanga
informs us that we have ‘clobbered them’ (he refrains from adding, as he likes
to, ‘in grand style’) and Brian, the head coach, is so happy he gets us all
some roasted maize for the walk home. Which is a lot better when it is hot and
you are cold.
When we get home all is back to normal, and we cook rice,
egg and tomatoes on our charcoal burner, as we do about every other night, and
eat it with lots of salt and some orange squash. Then couple of
(delicious) Malawian toffee bar things, some chat, some
use of the greatly anticipated toilet roll which we got yesterday, and brushing
my teeth on the front porch (spitting anywhere because it just soaks into the
ground). Then change, brush the roof-dust off the mattress and the sleeping bag
(pyjamas and beautiful new pillow have been cunningly stashed inside the
sleeping bag so are largely dust free) and then write this, and go to sleep.
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