Meet Fulani nomad kids-turned-tennis-stars
Recalling how it all started, Coach Amore told Weekly Trust: “About four years ago, I was with Kabiru at the squash court area and we saw some Fulani children carrying firewood on their head passing through the area. We felt they could be useful as ball boys and possibly learn to play the game. When […]
Recalling how it all started, Coach Amore told Weekly Trust: “About four years ago, I was with Kabiru at the squash court area and we saw some Fulani children carrying firewood on their head passing through the area. We felt they could be useful as ball boys and possibly learn to play the game. When we started, before long they started manifesting skills and improving and when we take them to tournaments, they were getting into finals. Though we have not won any competition, we began to realize that the sky is the limit for these children from impoverished backgrounds.”
Learning to teach the children at the beginning was a bit of a challenge, recalls Coach Ibrahim. “We lost several of our rackets because the children were always breaking them,” he said. “Language was another challenge. The children couldn’t speak English, not even Hausa.” The coaches said they were not discouraged because of the passion and enthusiasm shown by the children for tennis. “I saw their talent and I told myself they could become some of the best in the world,” said Coach Amore.
Coach Ibrahim said he did not see their inability to speak English as an insurmountable challenge because “there are players who can’t understand English but can speak the language of sports.” And in this language the children have acquired some fluency in their skills and dexterity for the game. In the court, they have already acquired composure and confidence, hitting the ball skillfully and running fast to hit the ball back at their opponents. Gone now are their awkwardness which used to lead to breaking of rackets. Now, their small hands are able to grip the racket firmly, swinging back and forth with the movement of the ball.
Training sessions with their coaches are usually after school hours on weekdays when they return from the local L.E.A primary school at Durumi, close to their settlement. During the weekends, training sessions hold in the morning and evening. So far, the children have played in three national tournaments, one in Abuja, Niger and Ekiti states. But that success has not translated into sponsorship of any kind. Even though it is inspiring to see the children display such remarkable skills, it is still touching when one sees that some of them are playing barefoot on the hot concrete court. Not that the children, innocent as they are and excited for the game as they are, seem to care much. Their morale remains high. Nevertheless, their coaches said absence of kits hinders their overall performance.
The coaches also have discomfort of their own to contend with. They are professional coaches whose sole means of earning a living is by providing training to tennis enthusiasts who daily troop the stadium. The demands made on their time trying to teach the game to earn a living and trying to mentor the children could be quite telling. But they carry on all the same, juggling their time and shifting their attentions between clients who pay and the children who they have committed to making champions. “We are merely helping them to prepare them for their tomorrow and keep them away from the streets,” said Coach Amore.
The clouds began to lift somewhat for both children and coaches when some ten months ago Dr. Jibrin Ibrahim, the Director of the Centre for Democracy and Development, Abuja, began to frequent the stadium to hone his own tennis skills. That is when he came across the children and their coaches. But unlike many others who were just merely fascinated with the idea of Fulani nomads playing the perceived elitist game of tennis, he decided to take action. He started supporting the children and their coaches by making shoes available to some of them and providing funds that will buy refreshments for the children after a hard day of training.
While taking their rest, they make efforts at speaking English, which even though broken, is an appreciative improvement to when they first started playing tennis without a word of English, said Coach Ibrahim. “We were teaching and correcting them,” said Coach Ibrahim. “They are now beginning to pick up fast and communicate in the language. I believe this is because the children are quite willing to learn.”
Even though they have played in national tournaments, representing the FCT, and one of them has been called to represent Nigeria in a tournament, the children seem not to have registered in the radar of the government or sponsors. Coach Ibrahim said this is because the government and sponsors “mostly pay attention to first and second place winners; they don’t bother about those who have potentials and are still trying to develop their talents.”
Dr. Ibrahim said he wants to change all that. “I thought it would be a good idea to expose the skills of these children to a wider audience,” he said. “I have tried to provide some support for them but I think there is a major challenge of finance. The second challenge is coaching. The coaches who train them do it for a living, they don’t have sufficient time to train them so they can become major stars, so it would be good to raise some resources to support the coaches who are devoting considerable time and resources for them.”
Dr. Ibrahim is now working on organizing a major tournament on behalf of the children where they will now have the opportunity of displaying their skills to the world. He said he hopes to use the opportunity of the tournament to kick-start a fund-raising initiative that will raise money to support the children. “With these, I hope to see that we send some of the better ones among them to tennis school, most likely in South Africa,” he said. “I think this is something doable.
Parents of the children at their settlement said they are happy with the attention the children have been able to get for their skills. “The whole thing started like a joke,” said Ibrahim Usman, head of Kukwaba Fulani community. “We began to take interest when their coaches approached us to say the children will be going to play in a national tournament. I sought the counsel of their parents and we all agreed they should go.” A parent, Abubakar Abdullahi, whose son Muhammadu Rabi’u is among the players said, “At first we were skeptical, but now that we have seen the good it’s doing, the coaches have our full support.” The big challenge now remains whether the children will get the support of sponsors who will support their dreams.