Not my game

After work the farm labourers like to head for the football pitch. They go barefoot, or in their Bata takkies, and they play rough. The first ball I gave them was an imported silver Fifa-approved item of great expense and they impaled it on a nearby fever tree within days. After that I bought cheap balls in Nairobi. These still get punctured regularly on thorns. The giant of a goalkeeper is a man named Magoolgool — named, like many of his tribe, after a treasured bull — who specialises in thumping the ball with such force that it rockets into the stratosphere and bursts with a distant pop.

I don’t play. It just causes embarrassment. Soccer is not my game. On the occasions I’ve persevered, I just end up getting squashed, which does have some entertainment value for the workers. No, at 39 I’m now a junior elder. I should be sitting on the touchline with my friend Tom, knocking back the Tuskers with our drinking steers in attendance.