Bringing equality to Malawi
It takes a coach to change a village
Jennifer Gish
Published 10:46 p.m., Wednesday, May 23, 2012

 

The girls played netball.

Kalekeni Banda evaluated it with the mind of someone who has coached athletes for decades. While the boys in Banda's native village of Chituka, located in northern Malawi, played his beloved game of soccer, the girls played a game he considered sexist and inferior.

The girls were soft and curvy, not trim like athletes, and it wasn't surprising given the sport, which requires players to stop when they catch the ball and look to pass or shoot.

Boys darted around dribbling soccer balls, but for the netball girls, there was no chance to move forward.

Banda hadn't made a trip to Malawi since 2008, and he hasn't lived there in more than 40 years, though his accent still places him there. But the nation — where his aunt Joyce Banda became president last month — has remained in his heart. The former UAlbany women's soccer coach started his Guilderland-based Banda Bola Sports Foundation in 2009. He provides school supplies, clothing and sports equipment and offers an afterschool sports and education mentoring program in Chituka, a place he grew up using mangoes and grapefruits as soccer balls.

When Banda returned to Chituka for a four-month stay in November, he expected things to have improved. Instead he saw a rural eighth-grade classroom packed with 240 students and two teachers. He saw fifth- through eighth-graders reading "Curious George." And he saw the schools were using his soccer equipment for netball.

Girls playing the wrong sport seems like a small thing to get hung up on when a nation is plagued by HIV/AIDS, poverty and a lack of education. But Banda started his coaching career in the United States shortly after the advent of Title IX. He was laughed at for coaching women. His players were stunned when he asked them to lift weights, saying it was gross and something only men did. They didn't believe women could run five miles. But he saw those women grow to be competitors and find their voices, not only on the playing field but in the classroom.

And so Banda went to the chiefs in Chituka and reminded them that he was a soccer foundation, not a netball one. If they wanted his equipment, they would need to have as many girls' teams as boys' teams in their school. He looked the leaders in the eyes and spoke their language. Maybe he hadn't lived there in four decades, but he understood the situation.

The village kids gathered at the warehouse where he stores uniforms, shoes and soccer balls. And the boys walked away disappointed when he told them they'd have to wait a day to get their equipment because the girls were being supplied first.

"The first thing was the equipment — 'This soccer ball was your ball' — and they couldn't understand it, so I said, 'What are you going to do with it? Are you going to give it to your brother or are you going to play with it?'"

They were afraid to sit down on the soccer field carved out of the wild grass and dirt of some farmland because they didn't want to get their uniforms dirty.

He showed them how to dribble the ball, how to pass, how to go to goal.

"One of the chiefs came up and said, 'Who are those boys?' And I said, 'Those are not boys, those are girls.' I told him, 'That is your granddaughter over there,'" Banda says. "They would never envision that they would see girls in that soccer gear, kicking the ball and running hard. We're changing the culture.

"Even the girls themselves, they didn't believe they could do it, but once I started doing things with the girls, they believed they could. Before you knew it, they were smiling, laughing. When I taught the girls you can dream to be doctors and lawyers, they didn't even know what that means. They think they're meant to be baby-making machines — that's the first priority for girls. They think how many babies they can have compared to the other girls. That's what I want to do with these girls, teach them their bodies are there for more than just carrying water on their heads or digging soil or having babies at age 12."

Maybe, after learning to play soccer, they'll dream of all those other things they can do.

Joyce Banda, known for her education efforts and women's rights activism, served as vice president of Malawi for about three years until the president died and she was installed as his replacement in April. Becoming Malwai's first female president wasn't smooth — opposition tried to change the laws to block her from being the successor.

Kalekeni Banda returned to the Capital Region a couple of weeks before she became president. When he heard the news, he called his brother, a chief, to ask how the girls in the village, his soccer players, were reacting.

"I wondered what those girls were thinking about how I told them they could be whatever they wanted to be," Banda says. "He said, 'These girls are dancing now.' "

jgish@timesunion.com • 518-454-5089 • @Jennifer_Gish • facebook.com/JenniferGishwriter

How to help

To donate to the Banda Bola Sports Foundation's Chituka Village Project, visit http://www.bandabolasportsfoundation.org.

Read more: http://www.timesunion.com/sports/article/Bringing-equality-to-Malawi-3581414.php#ixzz1wHOh21Nb