Time and Football

As copy and pasted from my entry in the official Kenya Field of Dreams Blog found here.

So as we wave a fond farewell to those second phasers of the Kenya Field of Dreams project, these include Anna, Chris Baum and Chris Pike, Becky, Simon and Tony. I am hoping I have not left anyone off, but we have also had time to welcome the third phasers who include Ali, Andy, Chris, John, Justin, Mark, Martin, and On Quy. This nicely brings me on to the title of this current post.

Time in Kenya runs on so many scales, it is quite hard to guess which time variant you are on, which adds a challenge to the two strands of the Kenya Field of Dreams project as explained by Tony in his 25th of June post. Albert Einstein was quoted as saying that “The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once”, never has this quote had so much resonance in these few weeks in Kenya.

There is European time, where the hapless tourist has got off their flight and into a taxi, where everything should run like clockwork. There is Kenya time, where time periods can run from a couple of minutes to hours and this can be due to many factors, which could include a heavy downpour of rain may have washed the road away or at the very least created some very deep potholes. This we found with the arrival of the new pupils last Thursday when they arrived an hour and half late because the rains had damaged the roads so the minibus driver had to drive slower. A later time delay was reflected by the arrival of the lunch time meal an hour and a half. So we then booked the lunch meal the previous day so that they would arrive on time, alas the Kenya time check stood like a bridge against a flood and the computer lesson was extended. The Swahili word for slowly, gently or softly is “pole” (pronounced pole-ay), the repetition of the word adds emphasis to this definition. The advantages of these time delays has allowed the Kenya students to explore the vastness of the Internet and the Google search engines, especially for Bongo Flava. There is a third form of time, where one walks as slowly as chameleon so as not to get too hot. This was illustrated by one of the volunteers as he walked back the Moving the Goalposts project today. But I hear on the grapevine, it is as hot and humid here as it is in the South East of England.

On to the second subject of the post; Sunday the 27th of June, a large number of volunteers were asked to celebrate with the Moving the Goalposts project as they sent a delegation of footballers to the Football for Hope Festival in South Africa. The teams have not been chosen for their soccer prowess on the field, but for their contribution to social change in disadvantaged areas. There are about 50 organisations from 35 countries, the full list can be found here. As we mzungus listened to the speech before the celebratory meal, we realised that no other global sport had such a unique way of using the sport as a tool for social development. We wish the Moving the Goalposts team all the best for their successes on and off the pitch

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