Today at Brown

On May 20, 2008, I set out for a rural village on the southern slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania to play soccer and teach English at a government school, supported by a Royce Fellowship for Sport and Society. By establishing a soccer league, I intended to offer children the same benefits sport has given me – opportunities for individual empowerment, positive growth, health education, and steadfast support.

In reality, the league was more or less organized chaos, with up to 150 children coming to the field to play each day. Although my grand intentions to create a sustainable soccer league for underprivileged children may not have come to perfect fruition, my endeavor did not disappoint me.

Children who grow up too fast

It is hard to capture in words all that I experienced in three months. My senses were awakened by the bright colors of fabrics the women wore, the unique (and sometimes not pleasant) smells of clustered city streets and jungle mountainsides, rich foods cooking over wooden fires, and a diverse landscape ranging from the dry, hot Serengeti to the crystal-clear Indian Ocean. Yet, what I will remember most from my time in Tanzania is the people.

Life in Tanzania is raw and, at times, “in your face.” I discovered fraud and corruption – but also a determination by many people to set it right. Caught in this struggle are the children. Handicapped by disease, poverty, and lack of opportunity, they are often forced to become heads of families or take on unheard-of responsibilities at home as injustice and illness threaten to eliminate their parents’ generation.

Hein’s soccer league was “organized chaos,” but hundreds of kids seized the chance to play. Credit: Abigail Hein Despite their suffering, the children of Tanzania were welcoming and gracious. They were my immediate friends, calling me Muzungu (white person) everywhere I went. Their laughter, bright smiles, and musical voices can melt any heart, but it was their hopes and dreams, their struggles and persistence, that melted mine.

Questioning an athletic career

The Royce Fellowship for Sport and Society came to me at a turning point in my athletic career. After a frustrating field hockey season, I was flirting with the idea of quitting the team. I am in college to get an education, and I felt at the time that sports were colliding with and hindering my academic pursuits.

In Tanzania, witnessing the daily struggle of men, women, and children to do the most simple and pedestrian of tasks allowed me to reflect upon what I call the three Ps – perspective, patience, and perseverance. I will always remember my first day at the school. Upon asking if the girls wanted to play “football,” I was told: “They do not like to play. They only watch.” Well, last summer we all played football. I have never seen a group of girls so excited to kick around a ball. They ran full force at each other without shoes or fear on a muddy field.

Being among children who did not always have the right to play gave me a renewed and productive outlook on my athletic career. I came to realize that it is fruitless to become discouraged when the ball doesn’t bounce your way – in sports and in life. When the final whistle blows in a game, I am still the same person; a win or a loss does not define who I am. Tanzania taught me that I can handle any obstacle thrown my way with grace, self-reliance, poise, and courage.

In addition, I now understand that there does not need to be a division between athletics and academics. I found that they can rest in perfect harmony. This has made me a stronger and more conscientious athlete, student, and person. Because life was so raw in Tanzania, I was forced to react in new, creative ways. This gave me a better understanding of my strengths, weaknesses, and interests as a student. I welcome academic challenges with confidence and independence because I am certain of my ability to persevere.

The bucket lesson

My Royce experience has helped me understand that ours is a world of opportunity for the privileged but also a world of responsibility for those privileged to help humanity. As I struggled to hand-wash my clothes in a bucket one day last summer, a student laughed at my awkwardness and said, “You have different talents than we do. You use your mind to work, but we use our hands.” At that moment I realized how much I appreciate the world I live in here at home – and what an enormous responsibility I have to advocate for children who grow up without childhoods. A 17-year-old Tanzanian girl may have taught me how to get mud stains out of my skirt that day, but even more important, she taught me about a greater sense of humanity that binds us all.

My soccer league did not turn out to be the idealistic “peer coaching model” I had set out to create. However, I did succeed in my original goals. The purpose of the league was to investigate the role sports played in the development of disadvantaged children while simultaneously providing them the opportunity to play. Together, the children and I played all last summer. Together, we learned about ourselves and each other. I confidently believe that when athletics and academics harmonize, the possibilities are endless.

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Varsity field hockey player Abigail Hein of Greenwood Village, Colorado, is a junior concentrating in international relations. She presented a version of this essay to a gathering of Brown administrators on December 16.