Neighborhood Soccer

 

Lucas has had the privilege of getting hooked up with playing on our neighborhood soccer team.  It has been a great way for him to build relationships with the guys in our neighborhood.  He can hardly walk around in our neighborhood now without getting stopped at least 2-3 times by guys he knows.  Even the all the little boys know him because all the little boys go to watch all the games.

  

 The team started practicing at the beginning of June.  They play every day except for Sundays.  For about the first two months, they pretty much just went and scrimmaged every day at the neighborhood field.  Then they had games for a small tournament.  But now, there is actually a coach because it is time for the “big” tournament Senegal wide called Navitan (not sure on the spelling).  Each day, they do some fitness, do different drills and scrimmage and practices are usually at least two and a half hours long. 

 

On game days, Lucas has had the opportunity to pretty much spend the whole day with the guys.  They meet usually around 11 in the morning and just talk and hang out.  Then they go to a different house each time they have a game for a typical Senegalese meal. We believe that this is really what has gotten Lucas even more “in” with the guys because he eats what they eat and drinks what they drink.  Then in the afternoon, they will head over to the field and get ready for the game.

 

An interesting twist on the team dinners is that there is actually quite a bit of animism that goes on.  Although at least 90% of Senegal is Muslim and we live in a neighborhood with quite a few Catholics, a majority of the Senegalese people also rely on animism.  The first time Lucas went to a team dinner, the guys used some hot coals and threw a bit of plastic on them to make it extra smoky.  Then the guys essentially let the smoke wash over them. After the smoke, they use this special water with soap in it that they wash over their bodies.  They wash themselves three times throughout the day leading up to the game.  The point of these rituals is for protection during the game as well as against any curses the other team may have cast on them.  They also add to their rituals at the game.  Each time before they sit on the benches on the sideline, they knock them all over and then set them back up.  Sometimes one of the coaches will give them a little twig to eat or sometimes they put a little bead in their shirt for protection.

 

It is a mix of guys on the team of Catholics and Muslims.  Lucas has had the opportunity to explain why he doesn’t need to partake in the rituals.  Our God is a big God and will protect him just through prayer.  Now we have been praying extra hard that Lucas will not get hurt just as a testimony of God’s protection.  One guy said once, “well I believe in God and Jesus too!”  But Lucas was able to explain that he believed that God and God only could protect him from getting injured. 

 

We think it is hard for so many Americans to not think these rituals sound almost “kooky”, but when many of these guys have actually seen witchcraft take place and spirits essentially at work, it would be hard to not want to protect yourself from it.  We just hope and pray that even if we don’t see a transformation of any of the guys hearts now that we are able to just be faithful through the little things of everyday life, playing on a football team (which such a large part of life here) and planting seeds in hopes that someday each guy will see and understand how much our God loves and cares for them.

 

WAWA

We recently made a trip to Dakar to accomplish 3 things.  1) We needed to attain a piece of paper called a Carte Consulaire for Lucas to play on our neighborhood soccer team.  2)  We were going to go to a grocery store there as there are many more options of items to buy in Dakar than Thies. 3) Bekah had a doctor’s appointment in Dakar.

 

Now it doesn’t sound like that complicated of a list of tasks to accomplish, and it shouldn’t be.  However, we quickly found out that it may be slightly more complicated than we anticipated as ordinary tasks can regularly become here.  Lucas’ soccer coach for the neighborhood team wasn’t even exactly sure what the piece of paper was that we needed to attain for his license to play.  He was just passing along information, but the coach said we needed it, so we were off. 

 

We got to Dakar and started asking around to several different Americans as to where we needed to go to get this mystery piece of paper.  Unfortunately, we found very quickly we weren’t sure we would be able to find it because we asked three different men, who combined have lived in Africa for over 100 years, and none of them had even heard of it.  But we decided to be optimistic and start our search anyways since that was one of the main reasons for our trip.

So we headed to the police station where they just pointed us to another station.  So we got in a different taxi and headed there.  While we were there, we were sent to six different offices and even the sixth office sent us to another office, but obviously we didn’t see this cycle ending soon or with us actually getting the correct piece of paper.  At this point, we were at a bit of a time crunch since Bekah had an appointment, and we still hadn’t made it to the store, so we decided to give up.  

 

Then we headed to the store in a taxi, but since we aren’t in Dakar too often, we weren’t sure exactly where it was and decided to just have the driver drop us off and walk.  We ended up walking more than we had bargained for, and about 25 minutes later ended up at the store, which was closed.  Why?  Well the store doors were open and the guard was there like normal, but he informed us it just wasn’t open today and would be open tomorrow.  That didn’t help us much since we were leaving later that afternoon.

 

Then we headed to Bekah’s appointment which was the only successful part of our day thus far and for that we were very grateful.

 

However, then we had to begin our trek home.  We had to catch a taxi to a suburb of Dakar where we then would catch a sept place home which is basically a 7 person station wagon.  We sat at the station for about 40 minutes in the back of the car waiting for our car to fill up.  Then we started our way home basically through a town that would be like driving on Lake Shore Drive during rush hour. 

 

Unfortunately this was probably one of the hottest parts of the day, and there was no wind whatsoever.  So we were just inching along, hoping to catch a tiny breeze somehow as everyone in the car is beading up with sweat in literally every nook and cranny on your body.  Finally after about 45 minutes we started moving and started to get some air movement which was exceptionally exciting.  After about another hour and a half we had successfully made it home! 

 

Lucas was then off to soccer practice, and Bekah started making dinner.  Bekah was very thankful she had planned a casserole so she could just throw it in the oven pretty easily.  However after about 20 minutes, she went to check on it, and the gas bottle had gone out.  Usually our landlord has a few spares sitting downstairs so it wasn’t that big of a deal, other than when Bekah got downstairs and there weren’t any full bottles.  Cereal all around for supper!

 

Obviously some days go better than others no matter where you live.  It seems here in West Africa though, many days can go like this.  You can’t rely on much or be too upset if the things on your “to-do list” don’t get done.  Some days you just have to say WAWA (West Africa Wins Again) and go to sleep hoping tomorrow things will work out better!