The Ball

On Monday, I relocated from Linda and Larry’s house, to move in with Nancy Hinga, the Program Consultant for Malawi. She has recently moved to a beautiful thatched-roof red-bricked home on the outskirts of Lilongwe. As we were driving there, I heard a sudden “pop” and, alarmed, thinking we had blown a tire, asked, “What happened?”

Simultaneously, from a distance, I heard the loud sound of children, making a collective and loudly disapproving “EEEEEEEE!” sound.

“Oh we ran over their soccer ball!”

I looked through the driver’s side window, to my right, as Malawians drive English style - and saw a bunch of kids, out on a walled field, who had, moments earlier, been playing a game of soccer. We were driving through one of the many poor areas of town, where small impromptu shacks lined the roadside, attended by weary looking sellers who were all hawking the same goods – mangoes, bananas and cell phone cards. This was not an area where a destroyed ball could be readily replaced.

This is a drive-by view of some of the small shops, across the road from the soccer field.

We decided to buy a new one for them.

So today, on the way home, we stopped at the same field to deliver our purchase, one red Manchester United soccer ball, manufactured in Pakistan.

“Leave the ball in the car.” Nancy told me, as she noticed me picking it up.

Nancy, who is Kenyan, and has lived in Lilongwe for about a year, has picked up some of the local language, Chichewan, so she went over to one of the older boys, who was sitting on the wall, watching about 60 other kids playing scrimmage. It turned out that there had been a match on Monday, and today was more of a leisurely pick-up game, so there weren’t as many kids and spectators around.

The soccer field, with the brick walls surrounding it. This was taken in the morning, when no one was playing.

Nancy asked if he had been there on Monday when a soccer ball was hit by a car, and the teenager broke into a smile of recognition. She explained that we had been driving the car and wanted to replace the ball with a new one, to whichever team had lost theirs. He gestured to a group of boys who were playing, telling us, in English, “It was theirs!” and agreed to fetch them. Nancy went to retrieve the ball.

As she returned to the field with the ball in a bag, the group of children who had been playing on the field, ran towards us, and we were soon surrounded by boys, ranging in age from about 6 to 16, all shirtless, dusty and sweaty, desperate to be given the one ball we had brought. As I looked around the faces of these children, with their outstretched arms, all I could see was a universal look of desperate need, and we tried to settle them down, to stop them from mobbing us. Some of the small ones obediently sat down on the red-dirt ground as other pushed towards us; all were clambering in Chichewan, words I didn’t understand, but could guess meant, “Pick me! Pick me! Give me the ball!” I tried shushing them by putting my finger to my mouth and going, “Shhhh” which seemed to work for some. Other boys were now holding up two fingers, waving them towards us, as if to say two balls had been destroyed, and so I held up one finger, to explain we were responsible for only one of the losses.

Nancy picked out an older boy who appeared more responsible, and gave him the ball. He handed it over to a nearby group of older kids, telling us that they were the team whose ball had been destroyed, and that the younger kids hadn’t even been there that day.

This left the younger set to become even louder in their protestation, as the hope of a new plaything faded. One boy, perhaps ten, with a rivulet of sweat trailing down his dark face, looked at me with anger, and spoke words which sounded accusatory. What could I say in response, to a boy who spoke a language I don’t speak, who feels things I can only imagine?

All we could do was walk back to the van.

As we drove away, waving to a few of the kids who had followed us to the van, Nancy shook her head, “I was afraid of that reaction, that was why I wanted to leave the ball in the van until we knew who to give it to.”

I felt like crying. This was supposed to have been a happy moment, with boys who were pleasantly surprised to have their destroyed ball restored! How had it gone so wrong? I felt miserable, knowing I had caused these kids the pain of losing something they hadn’t consciously wanted, and had no hope of getting.

“Do you want to know something funny? Funny and kind of pathetic?” I asked Nancy.  “If I brought a soccer ball to give away to a group of kids back in North America, they would react the same way! They would be just as greedy for it – the only difference would be that these boys don’t have anything, and the ball could easily be the only toy they have. But the North American kids already have so many toys, and yet they still want more.”

As part of my pre-departure orientation, I was warned by CRWRC that tourists and foreign work groups create more problems than they solve when they decide to distribute North American trinkets to local children. I’ve now experienced the effect first-hand, and it hurt me to know that there was really nothing I could do to make this situation right. I suppose if we had brought along enough balls for each boy to have one, distributing them would have felt good – would have seemed like the right thing to do – would have given me that little glow of joy you get when you help someone.

But I suspect, even if we had brought along 80 balls, we would have fallen short of the number needed to satisfy the desire of every boy for a ball. Word would spread like wildfire, and before long, I bet more children would have materialized.

One hundred and fifty balls – you still couldn’t begin to make a dent in what is needed here. Perhaps one thousand and fifty? Not enough. And so on.

I am reminded of the story of Jesus distributing loaves and fishes to the hungry crowds. So maybe that’s what was needed, a modern day miracle – with just the right number of soccer balls for every child in Lilongwe to have one. And a few leftovers to spare!

But we weren’t pulling out miracles from the van today, just one red Manchester United soccer ball. And for a field full of needy boys, the gift of a ball is hardly the miracle that’s needed. And the joy of helping has little to do with distributing soccer balls in Lilongwe.

I’m not even sure how to help here – where do you begin? Upon further reflection, I guess you just begin with obedience to God's calling...and go from there.