Prison courtyard becomes football pitch

BAFOUSSAM – We were met in the prison by 30 ‘street kids’ aged 12-17 – petty crooks and thieves with little or no formal education and a huge amount of energy to work off on a 8x20m piece of concrete. That was what we had to work with in our first training session in Bafoussam prison in Cameroon.

The concrete pitch formed a sort of courtyard, albeit a rather dangerous one surrounded by the walls of various buildings and a drainage canal running down one side. As if that weren’t enough, the playing area shrank progressively as prisonors gathered around the edges, their curiosity aroused by this group of white guys with their footballs.

It was a surreal situation to find ourselves in – and the feelings we felt are hard to put into words – but we managed to handle ourselves pretty well.

We split the kids up into two groups for two sessions of 45 minutes. Beginning with a fun warm-up activity making using of all the available space, we then introduced the balls – we only had four – and continued with similar drills varying the activities as we went along. The session ended with a tournament: five-minute matches with teams of three or four players per side.

We seemed to have achieved our goal: the children were laughing, running, sweating, kicking the ball, having fun, celebrating and hugging each other. In short, playing sport and enjoying themselves. They had discovered the world of Inter Campus!

16.02.2016