Play For Hope

I was recently able to visit Hope For Life Ministries with Serieux and Christian, my two main Rwandan coordinators.  This past summer Play For Hope was able to work twice with Hope For Life, which now houses 19 former street children, who are all attending school.  We were inspired each time by the amount of change we could see in the boy's lives.  It is truly incredible what a little love can do to a street child.  I had the pleasure this trip of sitting back and watching Serieux and Christian show of all of the skills that they learned at our coaches training and run a fun two hour clinic with the boys.

Excitingly going on the half hour walk to the field.

 Serieux and Immanual, the boys coach/house father, encouraging the boys in the drills.

Showing off dribbling skills.  From the looks of the uniforms I think it is time we started teaching basketball.

Christian leading a cheer.

We had an incredible time with the boys and Serieux and Christian vowed to return to help with mentoring them once operations commence fully in Rwanda.   From what I have heard, the boys are still talking about the incredible time that they had working with us on the field.

Some of you might remember a specific boy that we worked with in Rwanda named Jeune.  He is the boy that went from harassing my team to become good friends with many members of the team.  You can read his story here.  He has stayed in communication with a few of us since we left Rwanda via email and I was able to visit him while I was in Rwanda. When orginially we met Jeune, he told one of my workers that she was not pretty because she had no water to give him.  On this trip, his mother gave me a bottle of water from their small store.  It is fun to see how much has changed! 

Jeune is studying English and wants to come to America one day.  He also has many dreams and ambitions and it is exciting to see that he is able to go to school, eventhough he is sad he will now be in school during our next trip.  I was able to give him a Bible in Kinyarwanda, which he was excited to read.

Jeune took me up a narrow steep incline to his house which is in a poorer area next to a field that we played on at Kimisagara. The trek took us by rows and rows of small houses with a system of steps meant to drain water between them.  It was covered in still water and trash.  Following are a few pictures of his family and himself inside his house and in a small store they run in the area:

Jeune standing in the door of his house.

Jeune with his two sisters in his house.

Jeune's mother, who wasn't too excited about having her picture taken, in her shop.

As I got ready to leave, Jeune walked me to a bus station 30 minutes away and made sure that I got on the right bus.  As we were walking he had a confession to make. "I lied," he said to me.  "You lied?" I asked.  He told me that last summer he had told us his age was 15, when he had only been 13.  He thought that this would ensure in him playing in our tournament.  I busted out laughing as he had played on a 15 and under team, which means if he had lied anymore about the age he though we wanted, he would not have played in our tournament at all!

For this addition of Sports That Change, I wanted to relay a story about one of a coach that works with Play For Hope named Zed.  Last summer we had the privilege of working with Zed with a group of street children for a week and to host one of his women's and one of his U16 teams at our tournament in the national stadium.  

Recently Zed was charged to put on a women's soccer tournament in Rwanda.  He organized all of the teams and arranged for the money necessary to put on the tournament.  The day of the semifinals while in route to the tournament the team that was set to face Zed's team called and said that he would no longer attend the tournament.  While the coach had agreed to the amount of money to be given to his team to come, he decided the day of the match that he would no longer abide by the rules he had agreed to.  Zed having no idea what to do or to tell his team that had prepared and trained for this match began to make a few phone calls.  By the time he had reached the field he had a secured a team to face his team.  Thee was only one thing about the team Zed found to face his team: none of them had every played football before!  Rather they were a group of prostitutes that Zed had been ministering to  It was quickly decided that it would not be an official tournament match but an exhibition game.   The match began and Zed coached and encouraged both teams and while it was apparent that the second team was not truly competing, they laughed and cheered each other on as they enjoyed being a normal part of society.  In that day, Zed turned greed into an opportunity to uplift one of the lowest parts of society to feel like they were normal humans again.  And he gave an opportunity and a story of joy to a group of women, who would have been and ignored and rejected by most.  Sports opened the door to show that they were humans just as important as anyone else.

Last summer we spent a lot of time getting to know a team of street kids.  We met with them twice a week and pour into their lives.  They were perhaps the most remarkable group of children that I have ever met and are an amazing example of what sports can do in a child's life.  They walked over 90 minutes both ways to practice at the field where we met them.  Upon arrival to Rwanda I returned to the field and this is what I found:

The field has been destroyed by a local who was paid to repair it.  He drove a truck over it and stole all of the money that had been given to him to do the work.  We will be attempting to get the government to interevene so that our kids can play their again. While it was sad to see the field destroyed, I have visited many of the boys and they are still constantly smiling and playing matches.  The match that I visited them at ended in 1 to 1 tie despite many of them not having enough food and walking at least two hours to the field to play, not to mention their practice field being destroyed.