Manila, Philippines (Part 1)

Not even a month after our last run in India, I was back on the road. This time I was going home, well my second home, that is. My travels were taking me back to the Philippines. To tell you the truth, this trip came out of nowhere and honestly, until my feet hit the ground in Manila I was still unsure if it would even happen.

March programs were scheduled elsewhere for nearly two months. I had booked a two week long Eastern European-based programming run scheduled to coincide with the beginning of Ramadan. As always, life had different plans and a family health emergency caused me to abandon the Eastern European trip, not forever, but just until May. I decided to head west towards Asia instead.

It was almost exactly a year since I was in the Philippines and I was excited to return to the warm embrace of familiarity from family, friends, beneficiaries, and more. But I was also in an extreme time crunch. By the time I canceled my European flights and booked my flight to Southeast Asia, I was ten days out from departure. My clothes weren’t packed, my equipment was still sitting cozily in our storage unit, and worst of all, we had zero programs set up.

I threw aside a pile of brand new Nike jerseys that I hoped I could give out to a beneficiary organization from the year before: an all-girls children’s home in Makati. Call it what you want, but this was pure manifestation since even I had no idea if a repeat session would be possible with them on this upcoming trip. Then, riding that same wave of hopefulness, I reached out to another organization by the name of Friendship Home Father Luis Amigo, a wonderful Metro-manila based initiative providing food, shelter, and more to children in the country’s capital city.

“Thank you for thinking of us, we are incredibly interested,” messaged Brother Benjie, my first point of contact with Friendship Home.

I was stoked, but his reply did come with a small amount of reservation, only for a fear of a lack of space to hold the sessions.

“We really want to make this happen, but we don’t have a venue to hold it at,” Brother Benjie replied, having heard the terms ‘football class’ and immediately assuming a large pitch at a nearby park would be required.

While vetting their socials, I spotted a multipurpose indoor-ish court flooded in a striking green colorway, and quickly reached back out to Brother Benjie to rectify the situation.

“Brother Benjie, as long as we split the sessions into two groups – ten and ten, the green court should have plenty of room,” I assured him.

“Okay, perfect! See you soon,” he replied. That was that.

Amazingly enough, I was still a week out from the departure date and sometimes that’s how fast things move. Luckily, thanks to some wonderful materials put together from our marketing team, we’re really able to set these sessions up on the fly while instilling plenty of trust in beneficiaries regarding the credibility and more importantly, the benefit of our curriculum.

Excitement brewing, that week flew by in a flash. I landed in the country of half my blood and half of my heart, and for some reason, everything felt different… in a good way. For starters, we landed in the daytime and I couldn’t help but stare out my window for the entire descent, marveling at a country I had only ever seen lit up at night from above. My feet hit the ground and I was met with an attack on all the senses – the warm Manila heat, the thick polluted Manila air, it was all coming back. I took it all in, holding back nothing. Why? Because those things meant I was home.

The next few days were filled with jetlag, food, and rest, before heading north towards downtown Manila for our first double-session with Friendship Home. Brother Benjie was currently away, in nearby Palawan, so he instead endorsed the ever-trusty Brother Listher to oversee our two afternoon sessions on the day. Though purely coincidental, this would end up being perfect as Brother Listher was a huge fan of the game dating back to a period of time he spent in Spain, in Sevilla.

“My favorite team is Real Betis!” he said with a smile, catching me off guard as he hadn’t mentioned the traditional ‘blue bloods’ like Madrid, Barca, Liverpool, or any of the others.

I set up some drills as Brother Listher gathered our first group of participants – a mix of boys and girls ranging from 9-12 years old. The second session, also consisting of ten participants, would have an older range of young athletes.

Ahead of the Thursday sessions, Brother Benjie had reached out to confirm if girls were allowed to participate. Of course, and fittingly, in celebration of International Women’s Day, I happily obliged.

“We were so happy you said yes,” Brother Listher said. Apparently, when they were choosing from a pool of 90+ kids at Friendship Home who would participate, a bunch of girls’ hands had shot up – signifying a desire to play too, one I was more than happy to welcome.

I tasked Brother Benjie with the important responsibility of outfitting the kids in new Hummel jerseys, ecstatic to find out they all fit perfectly. Once dressed to the nines, they came to center court where I addressed them with a quick pre-program chat in a bit of Tagalog and a lot of English.

The kids were ever-curious, asking me about basketball, soccer, where I was from, what my ethnic background was, if I liked Messi, Neymar, Ronaldo, etc. I knew we had plenty of time (Brother Benjie had blocked off 3+ hours for the session though I knew I’d only need just about two hours total) so I answered each one carefully and enthusiastically. Jumping straight into our listening drill, I described it to the kids before a few yelled out, “We know this one! We’ve played it before!”

Testing their memory, I ran through a couple rounds, yelling out body parts in Tagalog while the kids all acted accordingly. Then, I pulled out a red captain’s armband to match their striking red jerseys and designated a captain, a young boy with an equally striking smile by the name of Waxel. He dove straight into the role, yelling out commands loudly and with authority towards his teammates. From there, we moved over to relay races which had the kids jumping and cheering for their respective teams – hoping they might take the victory with each passing round.

Once relays were exhausted, I tapped in my assistant for the day – Rronyth, to help run a secondary ball control grid, as we cycled through push passes, guided volleys, and headers. Just about ready to jump into our last exercise of the day, “Ulo or Kamay” aka Filipino head it, catch it, I dismissed the kids for a quick water break and took a five minute break to chop it up with Brother Listher. He told me he was so excited for the football program, as were the kids. Apparently, over the years they had run training sessions for volleyball, basketball, and even dance class like Zumba, while in the past some university students volunteered to hold arts and crafts seminars for Friendship Home beneficiaries.

“How about tong-its?” I said with a laugh, sharing a chuckle with Brother Listher in reference to a popular Filipino card game often played in the house with family.

“But we were especially excited for this one because it’s our first ever time giving the kids an opportunity to participate in a football class,” Brother Listher said with an ever-so-big smile.

Before I could properly wrap up our first group’s session, I gathered them all once again at center court to run quickly through the steps of successfully doing a neck stall. They watched patiently and intently as I flicked the ball into the air and caught it on my neck, dropping to the floor for some push-ups, “Lima!” they yelled out, begging me to perform five push-ups once there. “Sige! (Ok!) As long as you guys count down for me,” I yelled out, not yet laboring from a semi-held plank. 

Then, I called four participants forward to do the same, before then drawing everything to a close with a cooldown chat.

“What three things did I ask you guys for before we started the class?” I asked.

Waxel raised his hand, “Respect,” he said firmly.

“Yes! And?”

“Energy,” said another.

“Attention,” added a third.

“Perfect!” I responded.

I wasn’t yet ready to cycle them out, so I left them with one final prompt, asking the group what they had learned in our short, but ever-active time spent together. Balance, passing, dribbling, ball control, endurance – were some of the answers given by participants, and very good ones if I must say so myself. Everything done and dusted, we hit a thirty minute break as one of our older participants was still on the way back from school. Yelling at the top of my lungs in an enclosed gym space, I couldn’t be happier about the extra-long break and took every minute of it to consume a bunch of ice water and a bottle of Pocari Sweat.

Finally, our 10th football player arrived and just like the first group, they were all welcomed with a brand new Hummel jersey. As I watched them warm up, I tracked one young athlete who was very obviously a volleyball player, trying to keep up with the football theme but always reverting back to a tendency and desire to handle the ball with the hands and forearms. Impressively, there was just one single girl in this second group, but as Rronyth said, she played with just as much grit and effort as the boys and was certainly holding her own out there.

“It’s always tough doing two-a-days like this, tol (bro),” I said, turning to Brother Listher, “Kase may tendency (because there’s a tendency) to repeat drills, but you don’t know if there were kids from the second group watching the first session, and you always want to try to add variety.”

Disclaimer out of the way, I introduced our first exercise to the kids – this one, a variation of our listening drill.

Kids were partnered up, standing on each side of a line of footballs at center court. Then, in line with each ball and each group of two, sat a faraway cone on each side – an orange on one, a green on the other. I would be yelling out body parts, followed by either “orange!” or “green!” in which players would race against their partner to try and grab the corresponding cone first. It was a game filled with energy and competition, with knees sliding and feet slipping all over the court through it all.

Following this one, I instructed our ten participants to each get a ball and hold it in their hands. Then, we would be working on both ball control and spatial awareness, dribbling within our space while stopping the ball with whatever body part I called out, aided by the assist of Brother Listher of course.

“Pwet! (Butt)” I yelled out, which as expected left the kids clutching their stomachs with laughter.

“Kili kili! (Armpit)” yielded a similar result..

“Okay last one! Give me a hand here, Brother Listher, make it a good one,” I said.

His lips curled up into a smile, slyly whispering to me, “nipin,” as he could barely control his laughter. I turned to Rronyth, unable to register the joke only because nipin was not in my list of vocabulary. Brother Listher could contain himself no more, “it means teeth!” he shouted, bursting out in tears.

With the dribbling exercise out of the way, we moved over to a heated set of relay races. After a variety of challenges, things were left knotted up at 2-2. “Last nalang!” I yelled out, setting up a final showdown to wrap up the relay race portion of our program.

From there, we circled up for a new take on our ball control exercise, before maintaining that same circle for “ulo at kamay” with a boy named Dane winning the first round and another named Noriel grabbing the second. Finally breaking into a closing huddle to wrap up the second session, the kids all yelled out with glee when I told them they’d be keeping the very jerseys they were wearing.

“Wait, Coach, can you autograph them too?” they asked, each stepping forward to present a jersey, a ball, a captain’s band, or even a spare shirt.

One boy pushed his luck, asking for autograph upon autograph, “Cge tol (okay bro), 50 pesos for the next one!” I said. His eyes grew wide. “Charot!” (Just kidding) I said, almost immediately.

As I crushed another bottle of water to replenish my near depleted energy reserve, Brother Listher approached me once more.

“We were wondering if you and Ma’am Rron would like to have dinner with us,” he asked.

Fried chicken and soup (sotanghon) was on the menu, and dinner would be ready in 20 minutes, so I happily obliged. In the next half hour, Rron chatted with the kids as me and Brother Listher talked a bit more about footy and life. Despite only spending a few months there, his Spanish was incredibly proficient and I was ecstatic to share my second language with someone in the Philippines for the very first time – plus, I knew it’d be helpful to get some practice ahead of next month’s Latin America-based programming.

Over fried chicken, myself and Brother Listher enjoyed the opportunity to be “madaldal” (talkative) together, as I shared my gratitude for him allowing us to share our curriculum with the kids. He echoed that gratitude with words of his own, later sharing, “The children and I are so blessed and fortunate that you decided to share your time, effort, love, and talent with us. Thank you very much. We appreciate it a lot. God bless you and your family.”