This is a very special post about a very special team... Anyone that knows me at all knows that I love sports, particularly soccer and volleyball. And thankfully for me Malawians play both of these sports. But unfortunately soccer is strictly played by the boys whereas the women only play netball. Both sports are referred to as "mpila" in Chichewa, but the meaning changes as to which gender you are talking about. So to say that a girl playing mpila is actually playing soccer is very taboo. As unfair as that may seem to me, it makes me even more excited about encouraging the youth and adults to play volleyball since it is played by both males and females (but I'll dedicate more to volleyball in a future post).
What makes the netball teams in my area unique is the fact that the women play and not just the girls. Here in Malawi women do not share the same social or economic status as the men, and on top of that they carry the overall burden of taking care of their families. They do the cooking, cleaning, taking care of the kids, drawing water, searching for and cutting the firewood, and even for the most part the farming. Now I don't want to put down the men, but they don't do nearly as much work as the women. Most of them are unemployed and when they don't feel the need to work in the fields, they mostly sit around being idle. This is not true for the azamayi, who usually wake up before the sun rises and are the last to go to sleep. Simply put, they work extremely hard, so that's why I love seeing them take some time for themselves to have fun and let loose.
One of the reasons this team has become so significant to me is because of the way netball has helped me to integrate into my community. Since speaking Chichewa has proven to be quite difficult and since sports is a universal language, netball has been a great way for me to get to know the ladies in Kakunga. It's also especially important since the majority of women don't speak any English because they are less likely than the men to attend secondary school. Playing netball is also a great way to remove stress whether it be from the goats eating my vegetables a second or third or fourth time in a month, feeling homesick, getting sick once again after eating okra (I never learn), and the list goes on.
So after receiving birthday money from my mom I had the idea to use the money to buy jerseys for them. I figured that since the men's soccer team has jerseys, why can't the ladies as well? They were very excited to receive them and now they are the best looking netball team in all of Mchinji! Thanks Mom!
Here are some pictures of the team...enjoy!
