With Tuesday’s micro-session in the bag, it was time for the main event. The venue, Groupe Scolaire Lonny Rose – the Toure family’s middle school, located just a stone’s throw away from my apartment. Best laid plans are often hardly so, which was a bit of what we had been dealing with ahead of Wednesday’s session. First it was going to be 200 total kids, grabbing all the boys from all four levels of middle school. Then, we chose to instead set things up for boys and girls from two different levels, for a total of around 160 participants. I won’t lie, these numbers were daunting… sure I’d worked with groups as big as 75 in the past, but those were rare as is, and difficult enough to command that much attention with all the background noise going on.

Plus, to hype things up, Mamadou had planned to have other class levels watching from the different floors of the school – to really give it the atmosphere of a big event, because it really was a big event.

“I actually haven’t even told them yet,” Mamadou had told me at the airport on Friday, “so they’re gonna be so surprised. I’ll tell them on Monday and they’re gonna be excited,” he said.

Still though, the numbers had me bugging – I mean everyone has an ideal audience and mine never really broke 20-25 kids. Even 25 could be a struggle depending on behavioral levels and other uncontrollable factors. One hundred-sixty was worked down to 100 which I figured would be tough, but doable. Plus I wanted to make sure every kid left with at least something, whether it was a ball, a ‘chemise’, a ‘sac’, or a bracelet. Totaling those, minus a couple footballs to be left with the school itself, I could enroll a maximum of about 115 kids. So yes, 100 (two groups of 50) did fit the build.

“Whatever gift you give them they will appreciate because it’s that – a gift. Whether a bracelet or a ball or a bag or a shirt, it’ll be appreciated, I promise you that,” said Mamadou, reassuringly.

Tuesday night rolled around and plans changed yet again, apparently we would be working with the boys from two middle school levels. 36 in each session, for a total of 72 participants. “Getting warmer…” I thought to myself.

Luckily, Wednesday was a free day for the school. The kids, normally getting dismissed late in the afternoon, were done at 12:15. That way, they could go home, eat, and come back for some football at 2:00. With it, the chance to maybe head back home with a brand new soccer ball. I wasn’t in love with the idea of a Wednesday session given I already had a flight booked for Thursday afternoon. It didn’t give us any sort of backup plan and I knew that in this game, and especially in Africa, backup plans were always necessary. Despite that, I rested my head and prayed that Wednesday’s session would play out as planned.

Remember what I said about best laid plans? Well, I woke up to the pitter patter of rain drops at around 8:30 AM. Soon, by 9 AM, we were looking at a full-on downpour. Go figure… since Friday it had been 100% sunny and 95 degrees in Abidjan, yet now, on the day of my big double session, the rain decided to rear its ugly head.

I checked my window and man was it dark. “Well, that looks grim,” I thought to myself.

I opened up the forecast on my phone. Rain…. rain until 11 AM it read.

“Cloudy by 11,” it said.

An hour passed, I refreshed my app, “cloudy by 12,” it now said.

An hour, “cloudy by 1.”

I was beginning to feel defeated. I shot Mamadou a voice message just asking him to keep me posted about what the schedule was and if it had changed.

“Yeah man yeah, I’m worried about the weather, but let’s see.”

Luckily, he was optimistic, though I definitely had my reservations. Despite our playing space being covered in puddles, Mamadou was still holding out hope. “Listen bro, rain or shine, the kids are gonna be there. It’s football. Of course they’re gonna be there. So it’s totally up to you if you want to push through with it.”

That was all the permission I needed, “let’s do it,” I responded. “Perfect, I’m sending you a car (Yango, Africa’s uber-equivalent) right now,” Mamadou answered.

I grabbed a garbage bag of fully inflated footballs in each arm and trudged down my soaked front steps. I reached the front door of my gate and fidgeted with my keys. “Uh oh,” I said.

Remember that thing about best laid plans? Well… yeah. The keys had been acting up all week but this seemed to be the last straw. I could close my lock further but I couldn’t possibly unlock the gate. This has to be a prank, I thought to myself. Any day but today. Any time but now.

I had had this fear in the back of my mind for some days now. That I might order delivery or order a Yango and be unable to leave my spot. Locked inside my own house, if that’s even possible. Alas, that day had come. I called Mamadou in a panic. He switched it to a video call and watched me continually struggle with the door.

“Well hey bro I do have some good news,” he said. I had no idea what to expect. “Your Yango is here,” he finished with a laugh. I yelled out an expression of disbelief followed by a laugh myself because really what else was there to do.

Mamadou told the driver to turn around, which angered him because he had come from far away to scoop me up. “Me and Kone will come get you,” he said, immediately leaving the school.

A knock at the door and a throw of my keys over the fence later, Mamadou entered the compound and (of course) unlocked the door on the first try.

“No bro, no way…” I said. “Well that’s cuz you did it from the outside,” I said, hopefully.

He moved to the inside and unlocked the door just as effortlessly. Nothing left to do but laugh about the situation, I piled my things into Kone’s vehicle and we began the short trip towards the school. Despite the makings of a seemingly unlucky day, we had actually had some fortune when arriving back at the school. Basically, the kids had all stayed after school for the promise of a possible football session. But as kids do, they were making too much noise so a staff member tried to send them back home. Luckily, and surprisingly considering how the day had already played out, we caught them just on their way out and told them to stick around – for we were just about ready to begin. I dropped into the front office to greet a couple staff members, including Fany, a friend of Mamadou’s who had played pickup with us the Friday prior. 

My body trembled as it remembered some 50/50 challenges I had lost badly to him just days prior, but what goes down on the field stays on the field so I greeted him with a smile and a handshake, as we both made our way around to the back of the school and its cement football court. Because of the rain and a couple of the kids being prematurely sent home, we would not be having 72 participants on this particular day. That was fine though, because two groups of 36 in my third or fourth best language would’ve been a tough task as is. Instead, we had a little over 50 students. 28 boys in the first session, 29 in the second. Still big numbers, yeah, but definitely manageable. 

“Some kids went home, but really they don’t actually care man, even if it’s raining, they all just wanted to win one of those footballs so they all showed up & showed out,” said Mamadou – adding context to a situation that hardly required it, given the continent’s affinity for football.

We broke participants down into the aforementioned groups and then kicked things off with a quick introduction. Listening drill already set up, I enlisted a captain – Dia, to help me run it. From there, our dribbling exercise – this was perfect because I split the group down the middle yet again to grab some winners (14 participants in our first battle royale, followed by 14 more in our next).

Both sessions followed the same framework but did feature different drills. Some were more focused on snagging prizewinners, while others focused on technique, ball control, and more.

“Rapidement!” I yelled out, while supervising our king of the hill dribbling exercise. For the kids were timidly sitting in their own corners, afraid to make any sort of move at risk of maybe losing control of their own ball in the process. Having had a successful trial run the day before with our dozen participants, I broke into our 1 on 1 drill toward goal with the same two groups lined up at either side of the opposing net. First one was straightforward, when the whistle blew it was a 1v1 breakaway at goal. Second variation: a half turn, then in at goal.

Next, in the spirit of activation, a push-up position then running at goal following a tweet of the whistle. Last of all, a sprint to the outside bordering walls of our playing space then back central to receive the ball (hopefully) before their opponent reached it. All was running smoothly except for one taller boy tripping his counterpart from behind two or three times throughout the drill. We knew this posed a safety threat so he was given a warning that if he did it one more time he would be out and sent home.

From there, he behaved, but man you could see it in his eyes everytime his opponent pulled ever so slightly in front of him with the ball at his feet. Mamadou and I shared a laugh with every passing variation of this one. I’d fake toss the ball in front of me or above my head, like a quarterback might fake a throw, only to see the kids come darting off their starting places, or jump straight to their feet from their resting push up position.

“Man I’m such a bully,” I said to Mamadou through deep laughter, similar to a moment we had shared the day before with the kids in that first session being just as overeager to get the holeshot off their marks.

We hit a couple different exercises from there, like ball control grids, a headers at goal game with a revolving door of goalkeepers, and lastly – les mains ou la tete. And man, did they love this one. They always do though, right? I could see the smiles on their faces and the determination in their eyes. I could hear their laughter upon the elimination of another, meaning their chance of winning a football was now that much better with one less name in the mix. At one point, I lost track of my spot in the game. A bigger boy pointed at the end of the line, but we don’t reward snitches in this racket so I laughed to Mamadou and started the round back up, starting right with the boy who had pointed a finger.

I noticed we had a player left in the round who had already won a prize. I was going to tell him he couldn’t win two times, but Mamadou stopped me in my tracks – “wait wait, let’s not yet tell him he can’t win again, so that he won’t stop trying his hardest.”

It was a very smart and valid point, and one that hadn’t even crossed my busy mind. Another pleasant surprise on the day, when I needed a few older boys to help run our ball control grids and eventually les mains ou la tete, a couple students entered the fold wearing matching khaki uniforms. One kid was a new face, but the other was very much recognizable.

“Shaq!” “Comment ca va mon frere?” I exclaimed, giving him a handshake.

Shaq, though just 15 years old, had played pickup with us Friday too. He was on my side and I was impressed by his linkup play with none other than resident pro, Razak. Between rounds, one of his friends stopped me to ask a question in French, “Excuse me sir, where do you mainly train your players?” I think he was hoping to find an opportunity.

“Ah we’re all over the world bro, but really just with the younger kids. Grassroots level stuff,” I responded, though I truly was thankful for his help to carry out the session.

With prize distribution out of the way, we made our way to the front of the school to take some pictures with the new equipment. It was staff members and friends like Kone & Fany who were now thrust back into a childlike bliss, as I took out some remaining footballs for them and the school to keep. Later that night, between watching the Arsenal/City game with Kone over a post-program chawarma, and linking up with Mamadou to discuss how things went – we made our way back to the turf for another pickup session, the competition in this one admittedly several levels lower than Friday, though I certainly wasn’t complaining.

My trip beginning to wrap up, I packed my things and headed towards La Maison du Toure to link back up with Ibrahim’s brother. I gotta preface things by saying that earlier in the week I tried to pay Mamadou back for some CFA he had lent me, just to make sure I had cash on me. The dude put me up in a house, dropped a SIM card in my mailbox, was always on hand if I needed him to order me some food by delivery, and constantly was checking to make sure if I was good on food or anything else I could possibly need. I wanted to at least square my CFA debt away so i had taken out a $100 bill and passed it to him.

“Come on mamad, take it man please take the $100,” I begged.

“No no you keep that you still might need it. you know you gotta go to Senegal you’ll definitely need it there. Plus this the only time you might ever be in my country you know I gotta hook you up,” he answered.

I was yet again blown away by the kindness he had shown to me, someone who just weeks ago was nothing but a stranger. 

“Alright bro I won’t fight you on that, but please at least let me buy you lunch tomorrow before my flight,” I said. My last ditch effort, but I had a feeling he wouldn’t accept that either when the time came.

I cleaned the house up, hopped in a Yango (my driver got pulled over not even 3 minutes into the ride, but that adventure is a story not worth getting into lol), and headed to the Toure residence. 

When there, I had a chance to see Mamadou’s wife one last time before I flew out as well as Mamadou’s father. We talked of the Arsenal game from the night before and I thanked him profusely for the kindness he had shown me. Mamadou greeted me again with a hug as we placed an order for takeaway from a sandwich joint located on the way to the airport.

As you can expect by now, the place did not take credit card and Mamadou would not allow me to pay cash, “looks like I win again,” he said with a sly grin, though I did believe he truly thought this place would take card even if that’s a rarity in Côte d’Ivoire.

We continued to chop it up on a traffic-filled commute to the airport, talking about life, sports, footy, family, and more as we both scarfed down matching spicy chicken club sandwiches. Finally, as we pulled into the airport, Mamad struck a deal with our Yango driver so he could stick around and bring him back to the house, this way, Mamadou would be able to bring me into the airport and see me off, making sure everything was set with my flight check-in. A final goodbye later, and an exchange of a card and some bracelets for him to give to Kone’s children, I tried one last time to give him some cash.

“$160 cool?” I asked.

“Oh that’s way too much,” he said, taking $20 away from it and putting it back into my wallet.

“There, that’s perfect,” he said – leaving the $100 note and taking the remaining $40.”

“I’m going to give it to Kone actually. Even $20 would’ve been plenty so this’ll mean a lot to him,” he said.

“Man… Mamadou I wrote it all in the card but let me just say it again bro, thank you for everything. People like you are rare nowadays but the world is better off because it’s got people like you in it,” I reiterated.

“Listen bro, you keep the rest of that money. I’m good, I promise. You brought joy to me and to my people. I could never ask for anything in return,” he said.