-----Original Message-----
From: Arthur W. Bowman [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, December 20, 1999 7:27 AM
To: Womens Soccer List
Subject: [wsl] NYTimes: Butting Their Heads Against Religion and Men
A lovely story about women overcoming men and religion -- what, no Title
IX? -- in Nigeria to play a beautiful game.
The story is located at
http://www.nytimes.com/library/sports/soccer/122099soc-nigeria-women.html
bowman
--
"Art will always be Art." -- Goethe
December 20, 1999
MINNA JOURNAL
Butting Their Heads Against Religion and Men
By NORIMITSU ONISHI
MINNA, Nigeria -- The sun was setting behind the Niger Queens'
goalkeeper, casting its blinding rays on the dusty soccer field in this
parched corner of West Africa. Then out of a jumble of flying legs and
arms, she emerged from a cloud of dust, charging ahead with the ball.
Spectators roared.
Her name is Amina Bala, officially No. 9 on the Niger Queens and
unofficially the team's star forward. At 15, Amina hopes one day to join
the Nigerian women's soccer team -- "inshallah," she said, God willing.
But she is already a pioneer of sorts: a player in women's soccer, or
female football, as it is known in Nigeria.
"I will score soon," said Amina at halftime, when the match was
goalless. As the crowd watched, some sucked on sugar canes that a man
was selling out of a wheelbarrow.
Nigerian men have long dominated soccer in Africa, and many of them rank
among the highest-paid players in Europe. Soccer is such an integral
part of life that when Lagos, the commercial capital, was closed to
traffic on election day, boys swarmed the streets, alleys, highways and
bridges, turning the city of eight million into a giant soccer field.
But despite the strong showing by the Nigerian women's team in last
summer's World Cup competition in the United States, where it reached
the quarterfinals, girls have long been discouraged in Nigeria and
elsewhere on the continent from taking part in sports. Soccer in
particular -- a sport associated here not with minivans and a desirable
voting group, but with the barefoot poor -- was an activity from which
daughters were kept away.
Feelings against soccer are strongest here in Nigeria's predominantly
Muslim north. The women's national team, the Super Falcons, came into
existence in 1991 and is made up mostly of women from the Christian
south. It was only in 1997 that Niger state, here in Nigeria's savanna
region, gained its own team -- and lost its first match to the more
experienced Jegede Babes of Lagos, 18-0.
"Here in the north, it is very difficult for parents to let their
daughters come out and play due to the culture of the area," said
Dalandi Unmar, the soft-spoken coach of the Niger Queens, before the
match in Minna, the state capital. "They think football will expose
their daughters to immorality."
The worries expressed most often, Unmar said, are that the sport
requires their daughters to wear revealing shorts or that playing might
injure them -- specifically that it might make them infertile by harming
their wombs.
The coach scouts schools and soccer fields for talent, mostly daughters
of farmers and civil servants, but his job does not end there. "Then we
have to visit their homes to plead with the parents," he said.
He said that the father of one of his stars abruptly forbade her to play
after she went away for a tournament. "So I went to his house," the
coach said. "But each time, they said he's not around. He's not around.
But I could see he was around. So we lost her."
The raised eyebrows are not limited to Muslim players from the north,
however. Promise Nwagboso, 15, a Christian from the south who was taking
part in the tournament here, said her coach had found her playing on the
streets with boys and asked to see her parents. Her parents consented,
she said.
"But some people tried to discourage me that I was involved in a man's
sport," Promise said. "But I told them that playing football will not
affect my femininity."
Since 1995, Sa'adatu Kolo, the leader of the Female Football Development
Committee of Niger state, has been visiting schools and villages to calm
parents' fears over women's soccer. Mrs. Kolo played soccer in the late
1970s thanks to an open-minded coach at her secondary school, and she
said she has been in love with the sport since then.
Mrs. Kolo has become chaperone and mother figure to the Niger Queens,
the one to summon a player who is lingering after a match to talk to a
boy.
"The parents see me, a Muslim woman and mother, and find it easier to
give their daughters to me," she said. "But sometimes, even me -- I'm
not finding it easy because of my religion and upbringing. Why should I
be asking parents for their daughters?"
And yet, especially since the publicity surrounding the Super Falcons'
strong performance in the United States, it has become easier to
persuade parents of soccer's potential material benefits. About 35 new
players have come out for the team in recent months. But the Niger
Queens are still finding it hard to attract corporate or individual
sponsors, Mrs. Kolo said. Men have the money.
"And how many women of economic substance do we have?" she said. "And
how many of them understand the benefits of female football?"
One woman of unchallenged economic substance was, in fact, sponsoring
the current tournament here. She is Maryam Babangida, whose husband,
Ibrahim, was the military leader of Nigeria from 1985 to 1993 and was
the reputed mastermind behind half of Nigeria's coups -- nicknamed "Evil
Genius" by the press. He is a native son of Minna and a resident here
again in retirement.
Mrs. Babangida failed to appear at any of the matches last year during
the first Maryam Babangida female football tournament, and she was a
no-show so far this year -- so it remained unclear why she had chosen to
become a sponsor.
Did she see the benefits of female football? Did any of her own
daughters play? Or was it to acknowledge, with a wink, her husband's
legendary political footwork, which earned him another enduring
nickname: Maradona, after the Argentine soccer star.
Whatever the reason, the tournament brought teams from all over the
country as well as complaints familiar to most women athletes in the
world. Women's soccer now has 34 teams in the top two divisions. But
male players earn on average between $50 to $70 a month, plus bonuses
for victories. The young women earned only bonuses.
"Sometimes we get match bonuses of 5,000 naira to be shared among 20 of
us," said Bose Adejumo, 20, who played defense for the Niger Queens,
mentioning a sum of about $50.
Still, girls like Amina, the star forward, whom townsfolk here had
watched playing soccer with boys on the streets for years, continued to
make bold predictions. Would the Nigerian women's team win the next
World Cup?
"Of course," Amina said, unabashed that her earlier prediction about
scoring had yet to come true.
The match ended with no goals. But the crowd, especially the young
women, seemed riveted to the end.
"I pray we shall win tonight," said Salamutu Ali, 19, standing on the
side. "This is my team."
At first, Ms. Ali, from a Muslim family in the north, denied she played
soccer. She softened after a while, leaning back against a white car,
her left hand resting on the trunk. Yes, she played soccer and one day
-- "by the grace of God" -- she would do so for the Super Falcons.
The sun's dying rays illuminated the field. The temperature had cooled
abruptly. The sugar cane salesman's wheelbarrow was nearly empty. Local
boys were kicking around a ball.
A boy kicked the ball in Ms. Ali's direction.
"Play! Play! Play!" the boy yelled at her.
She sprang toward the ball and with a kick sent it soaring into the air.
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
---
You are currently subscribed to wsl as: [log in to unmask]
To unsubscribe send a blank email to [log in to unmask]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, visit:
http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/aam.html
AAM Website: http://www.danenet.wicip.org/aam
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
