So Friday our school hosted our first friendly football match. Please remember this is a European football country so it is really soccer. The match is with the local government primary school within walking distance. This was interesting because almost all the kids know each other and many of the older kids at the local school are siblings to some of our students because they were already at the government school when we got our certification.
The match started with about 100 kids from Kiruani Primary showing up and “meeting our students” in a formation. At first it looked like two gangs squaring off against each other in a musical. But then they made them “integrate” or “mix” which meant clusters of students from each school hanging out together.
I took this opportunity to teach some basic cheer chants to our students. Once they got the hang of cheering the team on they started creating their own. We started simple with “Let’s go Tumaini, let’s go.” The other school quickly caught on and started their own chants though in Kiswahili. So all the cheering was done in English for our side and Kiswahili for the other side.
We won 3-2 in standard play. Our players had a great time. Our coach, Sangwa was all smiles afterwards. The other students loved running around the field chanting their various cheers.
