Far-Flung Postcards is a weekly sequence through which NPR’s worldwide group shares moments from their lives and work world wide.
Final summer season whereas touring via Europe, I ran right into a childhood good friend who informed me a few group of grandmothers in central Kenya who had shaped a soccer group to maintain match and to present hope to a era of youngsters. Again in Nairobi, I needed to discover out for myself, and so final month, I took a bus north to the foothills of Mount Kenya.
Miriam Wangui spent 20 years doing humanitarian work on the United Nations in Geneva, got here dwelling, and final 12 months opened a coaching middle that included a soccer academy for youngsters. What she by no means deliberate for was grandmothers — she tells me they simply arrived one Friday and mentioned they needed their very own group. “It was just organic.”
At 72, Ann Wanjugu, within the middle of this picture, is the oldest. She grins telling me she left her kitchen mid-cooking to run and register for a coaching session earlier this 12 months. “Before, I could do a little work and get tired,” she says. “Now there are changes. I feel fit and I will not stop.”
I’ve performed soccer most of my life. Watching Ann Wanjugu dash previous girls younger sufficient to be her grandchildren, I felt one thing I hadn’t anticipated — a renewed urge to get again on the pitch myself.
On weekends the grannies mentor youngsters on the middle’s magnificence faculty, some grannies making an attempt nail polish for the primary time. No uniforms, no correct boots. Simply grandmothers and youngsters shaping one another — one dash, one chortle, one first at a time.
See extra pictures from world wide:
