As I’m sure everyone well knows, soccer (our football as we call it on this side of the Atlantic) is a favorite past time in Africa, and Senegal is no exception. So after months of trash talking, when CPW was over it was time for the big PST match-up…PCTs vs. LCFs (our language trainers). Reports vary and its hard to trust the sources, but the story goes that over the last 10 years or so, the Americans have only succeeded in beating the Senegalese once. Nevertheless, we adopted the Cubs' favorite mantra (BAHAHA) and proclaimed, "This is going to be our year!" And so we went into the match determined to take them down a peg.
Well I decided that six years of soccer experience back at St. Thomas Grade School, plus a brief stint (aka two practices) on the Queen Mary Women’s football team in London, meant that I should give it a go. Good news: I successfully made it through the match without falling (I think) or embarrassing myself too much (its rare, but it does happen). Bad news: we definitely did not win. I place part of the blame on bad officiating. Mostly though I think it can be put down to lack of adjustment to the climate and two months of all of us sitting on our butts and eating rice all day. Because goodness knows I was in tip-top physical shape before I came to Senegal. HAAAA.
But seriously, we lost (2-1…I think. There was some major debate about the scoring, haha) and probably due to their superior skill. Hopefully we will have a rematch during in-service training though and then…they’re going down!
Also, here’s an example of how my playing went: given my total lack of skill and the fact that I haven’t really played soccer since I was 13, I decided that the safest place on the field for me was at forward. This may seem counterintuitive, but in spite of all of our trash talking we knew the LCFs were better so chances were most of the action for us was going to be on the defensive end. Well at one point the ball was kicked towards one of the corners and instead of going after it (in my defense, I thought it was out of bounds…the field we played in doesn’t have fancy things like sidelines) I just stood there waiting for it to get thrown back into play. Brilliant, I know. When I finally wised up and realized it was still inbounds, I went after it and instead of getting the ball, I accidentally kicked Bamba (the LCF, not to be confused with the SED tech trainer) in the shins. I really can’t decide what he found funnier…the fact that I actually missed the ball enough to kick him. Or the fact that it probably didn’t even hurt enough to legitimately call it a kick.
What can I say, I’m gonna give Mia Hamm a run for her money…
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