Tuesday pm bonus -- the soccer game in all its horror and glory
I can’t help writing up my thoughts about the big soccer match, because the student-written blog did not capture the epic nature of the contest.
We brought from home a bunch of old Menlo uniforms to give to Banjika. After Wilson passed them out, and we all put them on, there were 30 people in Menlo jerseys. 30 against 0 – we have a shot at winning this game!
But someone decided we should play Banjika students vs Menlo students. To me, this was unfair, because the Banjika kids have skills that we (I) don’t have, like controlling the ball with their feet, using their head to advance the ball, and making precise passes as opposed to just swinging wildly with my leg as hard as possible if the ball came within five feet. (Yeah, but I bet I know a lot more about James Madison than they do).
One of the things that I had intended to praise our students for is their lack of complaining (although, weirdly, they had very negative (and ad hominem) opinions about my idea for the video where they all said hi to you, but I am confident you appreciated it), but they had some complaints about the field. The cow pies on the field really got into their heads, and the fact that it was extremely hard to stop on the grass made them despair that they needed cleats (which, of course, the other team also did not have either). I had a complaint about the length of the field. Didn’t we already run a 5K?
The game started with Menlo players wearing the jerseys, and Banjika kids turning their Menlo shirts inside out, but then there were also a handful of other Banjika students, who are not in our program, who wore a different school uniform. Some of them joined our team (and thank goodness, because they were our best players) and some were on the opposing team. That, coupled with the fact that some of our players subbed out mid game, sometimes getting someone to replace them, sometimes just disappearing and joining the concurrent volleyball game, gave the game a mellow, all-inclusive fun-game-in-Golden-Gate-park vibe. But that would not cover the full story – the game was a fair amount of standing around punctuated by moments of sheer terror with players running at us (fast) and kicking the ball (hard) and of course, some of us spending most of our energy imaging what injury awaited us and how long the rehab would be.
Adrian played valiantly. So did Ethan, for the first half, and then he disappeared. Poor Sam, who actually is a soccer player, saw limited action due to doctor’s orders post injury. Krista is also a real soccer player, but the 5 -inch grass neutralized some of her skills. Merrick and Cole played the soccer game the way they ran the 5k – intensively but only partially. But when they subbed themselves out at a halftime they did us the courtesy of getting replacements – two Banjika kids from the sidelines that if one stood on the other’s shoulders, they would be almost 6 feet tall. I will be the first to tell you that I was a non-factor (but astute observers will have noticed that I achieved my personal goal: avoiding permanent injury). I thought about just resorting to a lot of floppy to gain the referees’ sympathy. The referee, a 10-year-old with a whistle, was awesome. He had unbelievable poise and command. I want to hire him as a Menlo teacher.
So, what happened in the actual game? Well, we were down 2-0 at the half, and let’s just say, in the words of the famous cliché, the game was not as close as the score would indicate. So call it the Banjika version of the mercy rule or another example of Tanzanian graciousness and hospitality but a couple of the better Banjika players joined our team. The contest was tighter in the second half, and the final score was 4-3 (all three of our goals scored by Banjika students who joined our team out of sympathy).
