Torneo

The 2nd soccer tournament we’ve done was on Saturday. It was a triangular between my team and two other schools, plus a game between a group of female Peace Corps volunteers and a women’s team from my cantón.

My school lost our first game, 2-0, and tied the second game, 0-0. So we ended the day without scoring a goal, but everything went pretty well other than that. I had help from a bunch of other volunteers, plus two health promoters and a guy from an HIV prevention organization called PASMO. We divided the teams up into groups and did dinámicas with HIV education aspects. I led one where the girls would take penalty kicks and answer questions related to the virus. Mya and Gabbie, two other volunteers, worked with girls on how to respond to pressure to have sex, and Kristina had the girls play a game teaching them how the virus attacks the immune system. Esther debunked common myths about HIV at her station. The girls participating rotated from one station to the next every 12 minutes until they had visited them all.

Our boss, Carlos, brought the new group to see the tournament and get a feel for what work is like as a Peace Corps volunteer. They consist of 10 girls and 2 guys, hence the ease of putting together a team to play the women from my cantón. They didn’t have any experience playing together (or, in some cases, playing at all) but put up a good effort and scored a goal against what was pretty much an all-star team of the best female soccer players I know. It ended up 7-1, so it wasn’t really a close game, but the Peace Corps girls were good sports and didn’t seem to mind too much.

Besides the HIV education, girls tournaments are important for a few other reasons. Daughters have a lot more responsibilities than sons in most families here. They have to cook, wash the clothes by hand, clean the house, etc., often while their brothers get to go play soccer or hang out with their friends. It can be hard to get the team to practice because their parents often don’t let them leave the house. The guys usually can come and go without asking. Gender is a weird thing here. Coming from a different background, it isn’t always easy for me to understand how restrictive it can be at times. Like a lot of cultures, men work in the fields and at other outdoor jobs. Women typically stay at home. However, this gets thrown off balance in a country where the economy is at a point where there is almost no work available. Without jobs available, men are idle and sometimes women are forced into the outdoor jobs in the few times work can be found to supplement the family income. It almost never works the other way though; I have yet to see a man taking over the household duties. Sometimes the women don’t even allow it. I tried washing dishes after my first meal with Niña Blanca’s family and she told me that it wasn’t normal for men to wash dishes and that I should leave them.

I like promoting girls tournaments because a lot of them wouldn’t have a chance to play otherwise. There are already plenty of opportunities for guys to play soccer here, so it makes sense to focus on what is lacking instead of trying to compete with all the other leagues and tournaments that are already out there for guys.

There was some infighting on my team. They had just as much talent as San Dionisio, the team they lost to, but they got frustrated and started blaming each other after they gave up a goal and didn’t play well afterwards. The second game was a little better. I gave them a speech after the first game about sticking together and being positive, which they seemed to mostly ignore at the time but they were a bit better about not yelling at each other during the second game. They tied with El Delirio, 0-0. They had lost to that team the last time they played, so it was an improvement at least.

We’ll need to practice more often if we want to start beating those teams. That means I’m in for a lot of door-to-door work trying to convince parents to let their girls leave the house for a couple hours on Saturday.