27th June, 2008
English professional footballer Robert Green’s visit to East Africa brought him face to face with the reality of life in poor African settings. In the low-income Dagoretti suburb on the outskirts of Nairobi, he listened to hair-raising stories told by children displaced in the recent post-election violence in Kenya, played ball with glue-sniffing street children and gave tips to coaches of youth football teams in the neighbourhood.
In Kibera, Green strolled through the congested slum, jumping over muddy trenches in the lean alleys separating tiny tin and mud shacks, cuddled a two-week-old baby girl as he chatted with her HIV-positive mother; and refereed at a match for primary school children.
“There is so much to take in. Everything is so different. It is all such a contrast with things back home. The difference is just crazy,” Green observed.
Green, who is AMREF’s ambassador in the UK, witnessed efforts by the organisation to bring hope and health to families in the two areas. The Hammers keeper saw street children arrive early in the morning at AMREF’s drop-in centre for a bath and breakfast, followed by games and life skills lessons until lunch time, when they were given another meal.
Later, Green watched football matches played on a dusty pitch marked out in chalk dust. On the edge of the field, young people sang, recited poetry, and danced to music by local entertainment groups, all part of the rich menu of an ongoing AMREF-sponsored peace campaign to bring together communities that were at loggerheads after the elections last December. More than 1,000 people died and 350,000 were displaced across Kenya following the tribal chaos occasioned by the disputed election results.
“I encourage you to continue playing football to stay healthy and go on working together for the good of all,” Green told them Dagoretti youth. The English soccer star was mobbed by fans wherever he went during his week-long tour. They sought his firm handshake, his autograph on their clothes and notebooks, and posed for photographs with him. Many asked the calm, down-to-earth Green questions about the English premier league, which has a fanatical following in Africa.
Green was particularly touched that “even in these desperate circumstances, they (Dagoretti youth) did not want anything for themselves. All they wish for is a better football pitch with grass, a perimeter wall and benches around the field.”
In Kibera, Green met a group of youth organised by AMREF to spread health and peace messages in the slum. He met a group of people living with HIV who, despite stigma and economic hardship, are finding hope in life through AMREF programmes to improve access to clean water, community support groups, anti-retroviral treatment and support, and medical services at AMREF’s Kibera clinic.
Green was the chief guest at the final of a (PHASE) Personal Hygiene and Sanitation Education football tournament for schoolchildren in Kibera. Hygiene and sanitation conditions in the slum are poor, resulting in the spread of diseases such as dysentery, diarrhoea and cholera. Because it is an informal settlement, the government does not provide basic services such as water, sanitation or health care in Kibera. The overcrowded conditions make it an ideal breeding ground for disease.
At the end of his stay in Nairobi, Green promised to put more effort into raising funds for the health programmes supported by AMREF. And to put his words into action, the West Ham goalkeeper, who was accompanied by Craig Pollard, AMREF’s fundraising manager in the UK, flew on to Tanzania to climb Mt Kilimanjaro to raise money for AMREF.