Legs weary after a three hour Thursday kickaround with the boys, I decided to decline their offer to play Friday in order to (try to) properly rest ahead of our Saturday morning double session. My contact at Awlady, Rania, was hoping I could run a session or two with the younger kids, many of whom were very new to the game of football. Wanting to spread our curriculum to as many children as possible, it was a simple request and I was happy to carry out a double-session kicking off at 10 a.m. at Awlady’s other location. Rania was hoping to rearrange her schedule so that she could be in attendance as well, so I was excited to finally put a face to a name in case that managed to happen.

I’d actually already been to Awlady’s main location, the Friday before our session. I had 40 soccer balls on me for the two sessions (since we would be giving a ball to each participant) and even though it was barely a ten minute drive away, there was absolutely no way I was fitting all those balls in an Uber especially given their notoriously compact nature in the city of Cairo.

Rania said it would be okay if I dropped by the orphanage to store the footballs for the following day’s session. Little did she know, though, that I wouldn’t just be storing them… but inflating them as well. This was a tougher ask than normal since I had barely managed even just two hours of sleep the night prior. Post-program highs are a very real thing, and though it could’ve been the 10 PM cold shower or the soda I drank earlier, I’m choosing to believe that I was riding a high from an amazing first session on this October run that saw me wide-eyed in bed until 5 in the morning.

“Just get there before Um Sara (another Awlady contact) leaves at 3 p.m.,” Rania texted.

Seems simple enough, right? Wrong. Sleepiness got the best of me and I napped until near 2 p.m.. I rolled outta bed and quickly hailed an Uber to Awlady with 30 soccer balls in tow. Another ten were already inflated at my flat for the next day. When I reached Awlady, I was greeted by a friendly young man who struck up a conversation in English. Fadi was his name. We spoke about the next day’s double session though he would not be in attendance as Saturdays were his off-day. A couple young boys were nearby and dropped by our pile of deflated footballs to see what the buzz was about. One by one, more boys entered the fold. They were all super helpful, as they quickly organized a bit of a conveyor belt of assistance, one boy taking a ball out of the bag, another puffing it out in the loose form of a sphere, and the last handing the finished product to me to pump.

Thankfully for my noodle arms, the boys even took over on pumping duty as well. If it weren’t for them, the task would’ve taken me two hours – easily. As we continued to prepare for the next day, Fadi spoke to me about Egypt, asking me which parts of his country I’d already seen and which I was planning on seeing in the future. I told him I was mainly there for the football sessions with Awlady but had managed to make it to Giza to see the pyramids. Despite that, I knew there was plenty more I had left to imagination like Luxor, Hurghada, the Dead Sea, and more. As we talked, we left the boys to continue pumping and headed towards the turf field on property just to see what I would be working with tomorrow.

“Do you know what mahshi is?” he asked, as we walked in stride. “No idea – is it a food?” I answered. Fadi said he could explain it to me, but it’d be much easier to show me… so we moved upstairs where a few staff members were hard at work preparing the culinary delight known as mahshi.

Fadi was a bit surprised I couldn’t stay later in order to indulge in it, but my sleepiness and two hour ‘nap’ the night before got the best of me and I retreated back to my flat.

“Thanks for all your help guys, shukran,” I said to Fadi and the boys, hoping the latter of the two would somehow find their way into my sessions the next day even though I didn’t have early-access to a list of participants.

I figured rewarding them with new footballs was the least I could do to thank them for their assistance. They had all been so engaged, so enthused, and were all quick to show off their English, sharing their names and counting – first the total number of balls, then the amount remaining. It was a nice little mix of an English and mathematics class, preceding the obvious football class the following day. This initial interaction had gotten me excited and I looked forward to our 10 a.m. sessions the next day, though not so secretly hoping that my sleep would be a bit kinder to me ahead of it. After all, I’d seen the turf field and unlike Thursday’s session there was no building cover at all, so surely, as Fadi had reiterated, we would be baking in the sun especially at those high-noon hours of 10-12.

Finally, Saturday morning rolled around and I called a ten minute long uber to Awlady.

Our first group would be an older crowd, and guess what? Luck would have it that the four boys who had so gracefully and willingly helped me pump up soccer balls the day before were in attendance.

“Hey coach!” they all yelled out, exchanging high fives just as we had the other day.

Grateful to have some familiar faces in the crowd, I made sure to take advantage of it as some of the boys went on to help me throughout the program, setting up drills, collecting soccer balls, and even helping to explain head it, catch it, rather, ras-yed to the kids circled around us. We had started off strongly with our listening drill, carried out like charades for starters, followed by Arabic by myself and later by an English-speaking staff member who was on hand to help me run the session – Ms. Nahed. She had a great rapport with the kids and I was especially appreciative of her help. We then jumped from our listening exercise into relay races, which had the kids sweating, cheering, and smiling throughout.

From there, a move over to a double-lined shooting game – with our keeper for the day deployed into the net. Lastly, we circled up for ras-yed to grab a couple prizewinners… since each kid was leaving today’s session with a new ball, our prizewinners would be grabbing Egypt flag-colored bracelets to wear proudly around their wrists. Our second group watching and waiting patiently for their turn, 11 o’clock hit and they were swapped in for the (older) first group.

With a quick survey of our new participants, I quickly registered that they were quite young – clearly, their knowledge of the game would be much lower than their earlier counterparts. I decided to adjust accordingly, starting off with a listening exercise that saw each kid dribbling up and down the field and then stopping the ball with whatever body part I yelled out in Arabic. Next, once again mindful of our younger participants, I moved into a game of red light – green light. First, all participants would line up on a sideline with a ball in their hands, they’d then try to reach the other sideline as fast as they could – stopping in between only as instructed by a tweet of my whistle. Wanting to pull it back into our football theme, I instructed the kids to dribble the ball with their feet for the next round.

From there, a fun one that had them jumping like kangaroos with the ball lodged between their short legs. Not having too much time left, I drew the kids in for raz-yed, though luck would have it that each child was leaving with their own bracelets – as well as Ms. Nahed and our other helpers. The kids, however, did not know this and it was fun watching them give their all to try and emerge victorious each round. Now all sat down for a wrap-up, the kids one by one approached our pile of footballs – picking their favorite and then writing their name in Arabic on the new ball, officially making it theirs. 

Hardly any footballs left in front of me and even less bracelets at that, I began to start making my way towards Awlady’s entrance – stopping only to thank Ms. Nahed and the kids once more. My progress was quickly halted as I was interrupted by two older girls. One girl named Rahma had helped run some of the sessions. “My name is Rahma, Rahma Achmed,” she had said to me, only just formally introducing herself after nearly two hours of teaching football together.

The other, Roma, had just observed most of it – cheering the kids on whenever she could. Rahma was younger, just 13 years old. Roma was a bit older at 15 years old. Now, these two girls were extremely talented, tidy little football players. After helping run the session, they had shifted to the role of students and stayed long after to learn some freestyle tricks and new flick ups. First – neck stalls. Secondly, a two-step 180 flick up.

“Hey look, good?” they kept asking as they’d throw down a skill move nearly as flawlessly as I had just moments before.

“Headers?” Rahma would say while in between learning new moves, as we tried our best to head the ball back and forth between the two of us – we hit six on our first attempt but quickly reached an even ten shortly after, Rahma’s face brandishing a big smile of accomplishment upon reaching our intended goal.

As I made my way towards Awlady’s front gate just like the day prior, this time I was accompanied by Rahma, as every once in a while we would pause our walk to run through just one more skill move – making sure she had a strong foundation to build upon before ultimately parting our own separate ways.

“Bye coach!” she yelled out from the water fountain, a new ball in hand, ‘Rahma Achmed’ written across its face, as I hooked a right through the front entrance and flagged down a taxi to take me back home.