Kelly Mukuka

Kelly Mukuka gives pre-match team talk

This is Kelly Mukuka and I think I have mentioned him before. He's sort of one of the main men when it comes to the Dynamic Stars Academy. He's a founder member and the head coach. He his also instrumental in the organisation and running of the Dynamic Ministries League which many of the local compound teams compete in, especially if they are unable to afford the dearer fees for the Football Association of Zambia (FAZ) amateur competitions. Kelly is also a Paster for the Chelston Pentecostal Church, across the Great East Road in a neighbouring compound, and a well known figure in Chainda compound where he has gained considerable respect following his work with and for the vulnerable children and young adults in the community. He now lives in an outbuilding of his aunties, a small room that he shares with his 19 year old cousin Emmanuel.

Kelly is 35 and was born in Manderu Compound, Lusaka. His mother and father are both alive but are divorced. His mother now lives in neighbouring, although quite distant Mozambique and so contact is mainly through phonecalls and emails. Travelling there is expensive. His two brothers both died from the Aids virus and his one remaining sibling, a sister, lives in Mali. Kelly's first wife died, leaving their only child, a girl, who now lives with her grandparents. He misses her.

Kelly used to play football at a professional level for the Lusaka Dynamoes in FAZ Division 2 between 2001 and 2003, and for the Zambian Bottlery's (Coco-Cola) in FAZ Division 1 from 2003-2005. Before playing competitive football Kelly found employment as the warden of a local comlex of flats and as the financial controller, responsible for collecting rents. In 2005 he moved away from competitive football and became more involved in the church and the responsibilities that his subsequent pastoral role gave him. This pastoral work is unpaid but Kelly does supplement his family income by sourcing and selling tee-shirts, other clothing and shoes to members of the community. This income is intermitent and on a ad-hoc basis. If you read the last post you will know that he is in the process of building a shop from which to sell these items in a more sustainable way.

Undoubtabley, Kelly's main work is done on the football pitch coaching the children in the academy. He is to be found there from early in the morning until the sun goes down, interspersed with trips to the FAZ offices to submit fixture lists, results or attend meetings and develop contacts. He is constantly networking and following up suggestions and concrete donations to the academy and sourcing new contacts with this in mind. The children and young adults in the academy have enormous respect for him as both a man and a football coach and this reputation extends to the vast majorty of Chainda's residents. Many of the children of the academy are orphans, missing one or both parents, affected by Aids and other diseases and Kelly's personalities and enthusiasm with them is a very important and central part of their lives.

Goal Zambia is attempting to develop a working relationship with Kelly Mukuka and though this creates it's own challenges, it's the successes so far thar need to be celebrated. Already the organisation has delivered nearly 100kg of football training and playing equipment to the Dynamic Stars and have contributed finacially with the provision of money towards expenses, medals, the shop. Some money was also allocated to provide a laptop computer to improve communication in Zambia and abroad and to help the Dynamic Stars in their administration and continued development.

News from Zambia

The beginning of a new shop, Chainda Compound

This is more like it, this is what I want to see. This is Kelly's shop, the Dynamic Star's Shop and this is exciting. It's a little bit of a dream.  This is what Goal Zambia is all about and this is what I want it to do. I don't hear from Kelly that much because the internet signal in the compound is intermittent and he's busy with the village kids with the football on the pitch. This is brilliant though and I know the building taking shape in the photographs is a result of a lot of hard work, planning, dedication and considerable expense. Goal Zambia has been able to assist with this financially and now there it is, standing there in all it's wood and metal frame glory at the side of the pitch in Chainda. It will be even better, as buildings are, when it has tarpaulin walls and a corrugated iron or grass roof and things below and between them to sell. I'm sure and trust that Kelly knows what this will be. He currently sell clothes from his home to raise finances but this will give him and the academy a base from which to operate from.

Kelly has a friend who cooks chips and sells them at the side of the road. She's a business woman. Self-sustainability is a difficult concept to promote in a community of extreme poverty and in a culture that is not always best equipped with the skills to obtain what western cultures promote within it. There is very little money for basic needs never mind to put aside for a rainy day or invest in anything past the end of the week or hunger. In Zambia sometimes both modernity and urbanisation have been forced upon a country without the preparatory cultural or economic history that allows this to function as in the west.

Goal Zambia does not want to throw kit and money at the academies and then bugger off but at the same time it's not to bothered about a legacy. It does want fun and to share what it can; money it raises, skills and equipment. When I see this framework for a shop, I sort of see fun, I can imagine it. I can hear it being built in the sun and heat by the lads in the academy and I can imagine the older members one day manning the till, so to speak, and haggling, laughing with the customers. I can smell the chips frying and watch the kids looking at the pink dyed popcorn for sale from the popcorn machine. The chips waiting there inexplicably to go cold before being sold (Zambians like their chips cold). I can picture the crowds with people standing around and the excitement of conversations, of offside arguments between them, of cheers at free kicks hitting the bar and half volleys going in off it. That bench there, behind Kelly, is the team bench and the gaze from it goes backwards and forwards all day long, following the ball.

I suppose Goal Zambia is about making things up to enable things happen that otherwise wouldn't. And happen, most importantly, in a Zambian way. This shop was Kelly's idea and that's the way it needs to be for the long term. For something that will last and not just come and go.Working with Kelly is a compromise on both sides. I have a have to raise money responsibly in this culture to spend in another culture I am unfamiliar with. I don't really know how money works in the compound except to say that it's different from here. A lot of trust is involved and this is built up differently in Zambia. Both myself and Kelly are learning to work together by our mistakes, misunderstandings and ultimate successes and understanding, however small, along the way. The rent, to the local market or council is about £40 a month and what you see in the pictures cost about £60 for the materials.

People have dreams over there on the football pitch. The kids dream of Messi, Katonga, Ronaldo and Bale and scoring the winner for the Chipolopolo national team in the Africa Cup of Nations. They play for the greatest teams in the world everyday and score the greatest goals, bamboozle the best defenders and suffer the harshest defeats. Goal celebrations are perfected. Kelly dreams of land for a football pitch just for the vulnerable children of the Dynamic Stars, he dreams of building, a kitchen to cook nshima and school where the kids, whose families can't afford the fees can get a basic education in life and death and a social club for afterwards. Goal Zambia hopes to be able to help, not with dreaming the dreams but in enabling the dreams dreamt to be built. The photographs are of little bits of dream, a framework there in the grass at the roadside behind the goal. Something like that anyway...it's not as far away as you might imagine.

The bike repair shop

The Bike repair Shop

This is the bicycle repair shop at the side of the football pitch in Chainda compound and on the main road of the village. Bikes, in varying states of road worthiness, are popular although, as elsewhere, there are a lot of accidents on the roads involving them and cars. Nobody has any bike lights and wheels often squeak by on flattened tires or steel rims whilst chains, pedals and two wheels can be luxuries. They seem often to serve the role of donkeys and riders can be observed wobbling precariously down the roads and dirt tracks or pushing their contraptions fully laden with any sort of produce from maize plants, breeze blocks to baskets of live chickens. I have never seen a Zambian woman on a bicycle and the form of transport seems the domain of the male and as a form of fun for the lads. The wooden planked bench around the inside of the tarpaulin shop wall serves as a place for the blokes to sit and share the time of day and pass, with testosterone laden importance, tools to each other. The punctures and other repairs are not undertaken in a hurry. There is a lot to discuss in the bicycle repair shop.The shop and its hand pump also provide a football re-inflation service to the teams using the pitch, a charge of Kw1 (just over 10 pence) being levied for each ball. It does a good trade. Although there are no rigidly enforced cycling rules to adhere to, when using the road a safety tip is to cycle on the opposite side and head into the direction of the incoming traffic. At least this way you can see the cars coming and get out of the way before they hit you.

People are proud of their bikes, particularly if they are in good or at least working order. When I asked to photograph Blaya the local shopkeeper outside his little shop, he agreed then ran off without saying where, only to reemerge from his house in the bush with his bike some minutes later which he proceeded to sit on. He looked up at me in his Arsenal shirt and shuffled into a very deliberate pose before giving me the thumbs up to indicate he was ready for the shot.

Blaya on his pride and joy and  in his dodgy shirt

Whilst we're on wheeled contraptions, pushchairs do not exist except in the hands of Muzungus. Women or children carry their children or younger relations on their backs wrapped securely in Chintengas. Walking through the compound with my niece in her pushchair certainly draws the gaze from the eyes of the inhabitants. There are a group of generally more well off "cool-kid" Zambians that like to follow the trends they see in the media from the west and this takes the form of carrying their, perhaps carefully planned child, around in a flash baby carrier on their, his or her chest. You rarely see this in the compound though, sightings limited to the area around the shopping centre. Comparisons are drawn in my mind of seeing someone with the latest gadget in this country, following a trend, in public, receiving second looks from the people gathered around and mumbled, slightly perplexed comments from those passing by. The feeling is similar to when people here first got those earpieces for their phones and clearly enjoyed walking through the streets talking animatedly to themselves leaving a wake of confused glances. Most people don't follow this alien trend but just get on with things and the people of the compound don't really think about freestyle classic three in one baby carriers. Ever. They have neither the time or inclination, never mind the money.

A buggy in unchartered territory