First Week's Sore Muscles

We had a first successful week. It started with a running session monday morning. Because getting the girls fit is one step towards selfconfident empowered female football players. So we ran up the hill from Taghazout to the small mountain village above. It was the perfect weather for running: the air was still fresh from last night's rain, but the sky was already sunny and blue. So we made our way up, it's about 5 km and it starts with a really steep part followed by a lightly ascending road winding up the hill.
But for totally untrained girls it is hard to run ap a hill just like that. So when we say running, we actually mean, we were running a few metres and then collapsed into a trot breathing heavily. First drops of swet started to run down our foreheads and there was the realization that we had just started to run maybe 300 metres of the 5 km! 
So with strong will and some pride to not give up right away we made our hard way up and saw that it was already worth it just for the awsome view! (Next time we will take the camera and make some pictures for you guys). Viewing the first house of the mountain village gave us a good ease and the way back down the hill rather felt like flying compared to the heavy slow trot upwards. When we arrived in Taghazout, we were so proud of ourselves and so happy and high on the fresh oxygen that we immediately knew why we did this energywasting crazy thing in the morning.

Coach Kaja, Yassmina and Raja after early morning run

The next day (tuesday) we had our first football session. Due to not having a football and not being enough women, we were lucky to hear that the guys were going to play one game at the beach in the afternoon. So we spoke to them and they welcomed us to play together with them. But since we came a little bit later to the beach and since we also wanted to improve our team spirit, we first did our own warm up before accompanying the guys in their game. And a first warm up that makes everyone's heart thump for your team is the football running ABC. A great exercise where you run in a line with your team mates and all imitate the first person's movements. You can include some great warm up exercise here and it's easy and flexibly expandable. We can not stress enough how good the football running ABC is.

When the girls were asked if they can feel anything from the running, they started to grin and nodded "Yes my butt hurts, but it's a good thing!". So off we went into the game. The start was a little reluctant since the women were a little shy and didn't quite feel like they had the right to get the ball. The guys were friendly and open, but still very dominant and set in their movements and behaviour. But after the first ten minutes or so the timidity gave way to some wild enthusiasm and made the girls go and get the ball and fight with all their power to support their teams. The guys were encouraging them shouting thrilled "bien joué!" everytime one of the women made a good move. The game was fast, fun, exhausting and very fair and kindly played.

After the game we walked back from Panorama Beach and talked about the initial shyness, the guy's behaviour, the good moves and the game in general and all agreed that we can totally play with the guys more often if they are always being so cool about it.

The next morning we went running up the hill again and it was hard again, but the moment of being at the top and flying downwards gave us the same thrill like the first time and we did an extra stretching session afterwards to heal our sore muscles. But after that we all agreed that 3 days of training were enough for a beginning and that we all deserved a break.
So all in all it was a very successfull first week. We will see if the little girls are still in for a game on sunday morning. Tomorrow we will give them a little reminder to keep them all motivated for the sunday football game. We will see, incha'allah!

on our way to Panorama Beach

 

Here we go. Two weeks ago we were starting with building our team. It hasn't been as easy as imagined. Most of the local women and girls speak only Berber or Arabic and there is no place to meet them outside if you don't have any relation or contact to them. 

Fortunately we already had the contact with two of them who speak English. They are 18 and 19 years old and study in Agadir and both have already played football. They told us that there were other girls interested and motivated to play, but it was hard to get them together for a first gathering, because there have been massive storms in Taghazout these days. Anyhow we agreed on the first trainig sessions: Monday morning 9 am running exercise to get fit and tuesday afternoon 4 pm playing football at the beach. One little achievement for now.

Taghazout's new open gym

 
Next good news: There will also be a youngster's team. We spoke to a charming local girl, who's french is just perfect and she brought a group of 7 young girls between 8 and 14 years old, who are all curious and sheepishly shy but brave enough to practice their football skills with us. They wanted to start right away but unfortunately the storm picked up again so we will start to practice with them next sunday morning 10 am at the beach, yey!

Storm coming up

 

Here we are in Morocco starting soon with our project: The first female football team in a village called Taghazout.

Wall in Taghazout

Let's first look at the place. Taghazout is a small village that used to be the home of fishermen and their families until the 70ties. At that point some surfer hippies discovered the place because of the awsome waves and the big sand beaches and since that Taghazout has turned to a quite special mix of old Berbere culture, traditional Moroccan influence and a beachey surf vibe of layed back and international young travelers.

Taghazout 2014

If you come to Taghazout as a European woman who is proud to be a free happy feminist, you feel that there are two worlds in Taghazout: The world of the travelers and the world of the locals. As a traveler woman you feel fine to walk around in shorts and play football on the beach with the guys, you can do whatever you like and move around independently. Still you will feel slightly selfconscious about being a woman. It's like the game where you look at two identical pictures and comparing them long enough you will find that in the second picture there are little things missing - well well... if you compare Taghazout to you're European hometown, you will slowly and first subconsciously discover more and more that the little missing things in Taghazout are actually local women. The women you see on the streets and at the beach are all tourists. The locals working in the shops, taxis, cafés, surfcamps and so on are all men.

Playing football works the same everywhere in the world: You go outside and find people somewhere in a parking lot, on a lawn, between blocks or at the beach that run enthusiastically kicking one ball around. No matter if you speak their language or anything, joining the game is usually quite random. You signalise that you want to play in any gestics and the people will point at your future team members and show you in which direction your team is playing and then, well... you just play.

 As a European woman in Taghazout it works the same way. The guys are always playing on the beach and it's easy to take part. No need for language skills, no need for cultural knowledge. But as a Moroccan Woman it doesn't work that way. You are not supposed to be going out of the house for leisure time any way. You are not supposed to frankly go and play football at the beach, especially with a bunch of guys!

Playing football with the guys on Panorama Beach

When we played football on the beach with the local guys, we talked to them and realized that even the guys are not happy about this inequality. It is no written rule, that the girls are not welcome there, it is simply deeply internalised in the structures of the society.

So with the help of the local football team we planned to build up a team for the women of Taghazout. And we were happily surprised to find out that there were enough women in that village who were actually very interested to play football.