A football for 300 Riyals

Yesterday as I wandered down the alley close to where I live I briefly jumped into an intense football (aka soccer) skirmish with the boys who were outside playing. A number of them seem to be enamored with the strange western custom of shaking hands so in between hard kicks they would run up and shake my hand and offer me the customary Arabic blessing. After a couple of minutes, the eldest boy in the group, probably about 10 or 11, yelled something and began to dodge in between the swinging legs, attempting to stop the ball. When he was finally successful, he hurried over to me and, apparently the unofficial spokesman for the small band of boys, showed me two large, once-patched-and-now-again-unmended holes that were the cause behind the ball being so flat. In hurried Arabic he explained to me (I think) that they had been playing with the ball for a long time and tried to fix it but it just had too many holes in it. With a number of oversized hand gestures he motioned down the street and said something else that I wasn't able to understand. At first I thought he wanted me to walk somewhere else to play with them (probably because the other boys kept yelling "football! football!") but then I noticed two men standing at the end of the alley. They were giving me a most peculiar look that I had no idea how to interpret. I didn't know if the look came from the fact that they were watching me play ball with the kids or from our conversation that I probably obviously wasn't understanding in its entirety or from something else. But we passed by them and they simply turned and studied me and the entourage of about seven little boys scampering down the street. After another minute of conversation I realized that the eldest boy was asking me if I would buy them another ball and was leading me to a little store where we might find one. I nodded and momentarily hoped the five dollars I had in my wallet would be enough. I needn't have worried. The shopkeeper looked a little surprised but smiled gratefully at the strange woman asking to buy something from his very ecclectic collection of items that he had somehow fashioned into a store. He kicked a couple balls around on the floor, found the one that was pumped up the best and held it up for our inspection. The cost was a whopping 300 riyals, equivalent to a dollar and fifty cents. The boys, not assuming anything, stood there patiently to see what my response would be. I nodded and pulled a bill out of my wallet. A minute later the ball was proudly in the one boy's hands while the others tried to bat it out and start a little skirmish on the ever-too-narrow sidewalk that is hardly wide enough for a person to walk down. I indicated that I needed to go to another store and the boys nodded and headed back to the alley.

When I arrived back a few minutes later, the ball was in flying motion a good ways down the back street and the boys all stopped to wave and yell "shukran sadiqatii!" (thank you, my friend). But as I knocked on the door for the guard to let me in, another boy in the group scampered back. With a slight tilt of his head he pronounced in adorable, Arabic-clipped English, "thank you." I stuck my hand out to shake his and told him he was welcome, no problem. Then in what has got to be the most adorable moment I have encountered since arriving in Yemen, he smiled a slight and shy smile, laid his right hand over his heart and recited what was clearly a well-practiced line: "I love you." With that, he turned, waved, and ran off to play ball.

As adorable as this story is and as much as I will always love the memory (we all know I fall in love with kids a bit too easily - oh wait, that's not possible :), a ball for a group of boys won't change their lives. It may change their perception of an American, or it might make their life better for an evening or provide them a source of entertainment for another month or two, but really, it's nothing. Not even a drop in the bucket in the intense need that sweeps this country. I love Yemen, but I am not immune to its faults. Kids here are in desperate need of opportunities. On an evening like this, other emotions drift away and I am simply left broken-hearted. Heart-broken for the kids I see wandering the streets and mountain passes - not because I want to take them out of this place, but because I want to make it better. I want them to have the opportunities I know they have the skill and ability to take full advantage of if only given the opportunity.