Some Sport and Some Dancing

It was only two days.  Well really only about 24 hours and some change that I spent by myself, cleaning, writing, reading and pondering the last two months while envisioning the next six.  After I had a moment of silence for those lost on 9.11.01 I no longer wanted to be silent.  I had been inside my own head and I wanted to tell someone something, even if it was of no importance at all.  Seeing as NFL football starts today I decided to pump up the football I brought (did you doubt me?) and walk out my door to introduce our guard to a new game called football, American style.  Awkward push passes and a few drops later we ended our game of catch and I got the urge to take a run and become better acquainted with my new neighborhood.

I had been around area 6 before to visit refugees locked up in Maula Prison a short jaunt away from my house.  The fact that prisoners are being detained so close to my new home doesn’t bother me in the least seeing as most of them are wrongfully imprisoned for various reasons from petty theft to not having documents on their person when approached by a policeman.  I traveled down the potholed pavement for about 100 yards until it became a single lane dirt road.  It was there that I stopped to watch a group of young boys kick a plastic bag ball around with forceful precision.  Once I stopped a group of about five girls called me over.  Instead, I waved them over and the small group of five girls swelled to nearly fifteen girls running in my direction.   They surrounded me and in broken English we introduced ourselves.  I couldn’t tell you one of their names after about one minute but we did agreed to play a game of netball once I could retrieve the soccer ball I brought.

I don’t know the first thing about netball but I learned quickly and I figure I had some advantage because I was one of the only people with shoes on.  Seven girls a side and we were ready.  Shooters stay in the offensive zone, defensive players don’t leave the back court and there are a few positions that can roam through two zones but not all three.  Pass the ball, don’t run with it, shoot at the independently standing hoop and score a point.  Got it.  Balls were tossed, passes were caught, winds blew, dust swirled, foot faults occurred, points were scored and high fives were given.  I had to hand it to them, I had never seen a group of 14 players and another ten onlookers come together so quickly for the most sporadic game of netball I have ever seen.  Granted the first game of netball I have ever seen but that is neither here nor there.  On Amigo Lane, where I grew up, there were the Garber’s, the Hoffman’s and the Healy’s.  If we wanted to get a game of that magnitude together it would have taken arranged play dates and a hope and a prayer that we could get past the mean old dog Sasha that separated the top of the street from the bottom in order to invite more kids to play.  Rural village 1, Suburbia 0.

When the game ended they all enthusiastically insisted that we do some dancing.  Of course.  Some sport and some dancing.  It makes perfect sense when you think about it.  No really, keep thinking.  Again, I was surrounded.  ‘When in Rome’... I followed their lead and shook my butt with the rest of them.  Thunderous claps, a song they all sang together and taking turns shaking it in the middle of the circle.  Some of these young girls could shake their hips in ways that would make Shakira look like a slouch.  No kidding.  I am sorry for the Shakira reference, that is so not like me, but there is no better way to describe the hip popping, gyrating, amazing rhythm that seemed to live inside the souls of these girls.  And to think this is a modest country.  I shook my white butt and everyone erupted in laughter and boisterous encouragement for more.

Needless to say I have a date with about 15 or 20 local girls/women ranging in age from 7-25 next Sunday.  Maybe they can teach me more of that dancing.