Fooooooooootballl

Claire and I are staying at a place called Pweza on Pingwe beach in Zanzibar. The beach is on the east side of the island and has white sand and turquoise water. And, if you walk fifty metres inland from the water’s edge, you come across a football pitch. Not just a normal football pitch, but quite possibly the most picturesque pitch I’ve ever seen. The playing surface consists of compact sand and the pitch is surrounded by a large number of gigantic palm trees. And the goals are made of metal and have nets. Actual nets! On our first day on the island Claire and I went for a stroll around and came across this pitch, which is literally one minute walk from where we were staying. There were a few local guys around and I asked one when they played football – I was eager to join them. Turned out that they play every day at five in the evening.

So, for the next three weeks whenever the weather was good, I would grab my trainers and join them for a kick about. There are usually about thirty players wanting to play so they arrange themselves into two teams and then the rest are subs. The games are usually hectic as the pitch is slightly smaller than a standard pitch and the it’s often covered in giant puddles, due to the fact that we’re in the middle of rainy season. When the sun is shining it gets extremely hot here on Zanzibar, which certainly makes playing football difficult. Well, for me it does. The local guys seem to cope fine. Though, we have had some great games and it has meant I’ve been able to play a lot of football recently and spend a lot of time getting to know the local guys, which has been a real highlight of our trip. Come the end of our time on the island all of the kids have learnt my name and I think it’s due to me playing football every day. Each time we walk through the village the kids all shout my name at me which is quite sweet.

One evening I had been playing with the guys and just before the game came to a close one of the players asked me if I wanted to play for their village team in a proper arranged fixture the next day. I jumped at the chance, and felt great about the fact that I was invited to join them. I asked him what time and he said to meet them at the pitch at ten o’clock – the fixture was away. I said, almost automatically – “ten o’clock in the morning?” to which he said “no”. I was confused. “But, not ten o’clock at night?” I asked. He laughed and said “no, ten o’clock in the afternoon.” I smiled and went away slightly confused, but thought that perhaps he meant ten in the morning. Anyway, I was getting to play for the local side in an arranged fixture against a rival village. This was the moment I’d been waiting for since we landed in Africa.

I woke up in the morning and ten o’clock rolled around. There was no sign of anyone. I was slightly taken aback and asked Ame – the awesome local guy who works where we are staying – whether he had heard anything about the game being called off. He asked me what time I was expecting them and I told him ten. He said “nooo, ten Swahili time”. Suddenly it all made sense. The guy’s confusing mention of leaving at ten in the afternoon clicked in my head. I had forgotten all about Swahili time. Essentially, ten in the afternoon in Swahili time is four in the afternoon regular time. Swahili time takes sunrise, which is at six am, and then one o’clock is one hour after sunrise, two o’clock is two hours after sunrise etc. This method of telling the time, especially somewhere so close to the equator where the sun rises and sets at pretty much the same time every day of the year, makes perfect sense. So, I wasn’t late and they hadn’t left without me.

Eventually, Kessi, one of the guys playing for the team, turned up at our hut to get me. So I grabbed my trainers and a drink and went with him to his house in the village. On the way, I asked him what the team was called he said “Wazungu”. This is one of the Swahili words for whiteman. I was confused and asked why the locals named their team whiteman – he said that it was because they wanted to play with respect… I didn’t want to spoil his opinion of white men so kept my opinions on Joey Barton to myself. Anyway, we turned up at Kessi’s house and he ran in and grabbed my kit. We were to wear an old AC Milan golden away kit. It looked pretty classy actually despite the fact that they had all scribbled their names on the backs of their shirts with permanent marker.

After getting the kit we then sat in the wooden bus shelter with the rest of the players waiting for our transport to the game. Eventually it arrived. A small pickup truck. The trip to the game was fantastic. Eleven men, including me, were in the back of the pick up, and another three were sat in the cabin. We drove for an hour and a half, with everyone in a great mood. The feeling was exactly the same as the one I get before games back home. Everyone was shouting and joking around as we whizzed through tropical forests and past giant rice fields full of women hard at work. The only difference was that everyone was talking in Swahili so I couldn’t understand a word. Though I did notice that Mpesa was getting most of the stick from the other players – there is always one fall guy in every team who gets ribbed the most it seems. Along the way we also stopped a number of times to give people lifts. Old Muslim women wrapped up nicely would jump in the back amongst the footballers and be dropped off at the next village, and we also gave a lift to a local guy with a giant bag of grain and a crying toddler who Kessi had to hold, which was pretty funny.

After a long and not-too-comfortable drive across the island, we arrived just south of Pongwe. The pitch we were to play on was a sight indeed. It was mainly dirt, which was OK, but down the edges were a large number of shrubs that came up to your ankle, and the goalmouths both had gigantic puddles. We didn’t care. Well, most of us didn’t. Hogo, our goalkeeper wasn’t too pleased. After realising that we were pretty early for the game we took a stroll to the beach and all laid down on the sand. A few of the guys went to the shop and bought some biscuits and bananas, sharing them around with the rest of the players. Then for the next hour, most of us slept in the shade of a bunch of trees to the sound of the sea lapping gently against the shore.

An hour or so later – I can’t tell how long as I definitely fell asleep – we were being woken up. It was time. The other team from the other village had arrived and we had a game to play. The pitch was, by the time we were ready to kick off, surrounded by locals all ready to watch the match. I counted almost a hundred guys all sat around in the shade watching. We did a little warm up, changed into our golden AC Milan strip and were ready for the game. I was playing Number 10 in a classic, old school four four two formation. This was fine with me as it meant not as much running as I was expecting in the blistering heat.

The game kicked off and was great fun. It was hotly contested, both teams really wanted to win, and we fell behind to an early lead. After pulling one back the other village then made it 2-1. However, before half time Salou, a giant central midfielder with fantastic chest control, bagged two goals to make the score 3-2 to us. The main attraction, however, as opposed to the football, had to be the referee. The ref was awful. But he loved it. There were no linesmen, but he still managed to flag almost everyone offside, despite being about thirty metres from play. He also used elaborate exaggerated hand gestures to signal for fouls and throw ins like he was on an air traffic controller. He sent one of our players off for five minutes for ignoring the whilstle and firing a shot over the cross bar. However, I noticed he didn’t do the same to me when I repeated the offence, though he did waggle his finger at me as if to say ‘don’t do that again’. He also gave fouls for the merest of incidents. Basically the game became a bit stop start. His refereeing inability came to a fore when two players from the opposition, from the same team, both collided with each other and he gave our team a free kick. I was baffled. I mean, yes, their player committed the ‘foul’, but one of their players was also on the receiving end. How did it mean us getting a free kick?

We went in at half time, and by ‘in’ I mean the shade of the trees by the side of the pitch, winning 3-2. As we jogged out for the second half I noticed that the opposition had changed its entire eleven. They even had a different kit on! I was exhausted. I had played football four days in a row and had now just played my first proper fourty five minutes of competitive football in a long time in blistering heat and now had to face a brand new team of fresh legs. However, our team fared even better in the second half. We dominated the game and could have scored a few more. I offered to come off about fifteen minutes into the second half and watched as we held out to win the game 3 – 2.

The sun was just beginning to set as we all jumped back in the pickup truck for the drive home. And fifteen minutes into the journey it was completely dark. We sped home at a terrifying speed with everyone shouting and cheering and chatting away. Again, I couldn’t understand anything, but still couldn’t keep from smiling. Each time we passed through a new village all of the players would jump up and start screaming and shouting and cheering, thumping the side of the truck. It’s safe to say that half the island knew we won that day. We got back to Pingwe at around 8pm and all shook hands before heading off in our own directions. It was my first game for Wazungu, and I think I may have been the first wazungu to play for Wazungu.

When I got back to the hut the first thing Claire and the others noticed was how much I had caught the sun. I forgot to take sun cream with me and had been out in the heat all day. It’s safe to say my face was bright red. But I didn’t really care. We had won the game and I had had an amazing day.

As a side note, I also played in a home game the following week, scoring the first goal of the game which ended 3-3. I’ve really gotten to know these guys over the three weeks we’ve been on Zanzibar and they’ve really made me feel a part of the team. I’ll definitely miss them!