How football is helping Mathare girls realise their dreams

Selvin Atamba, 20, and Maximila Robi, 19, have big dreams.

If you come across the duo playing football, one thing strikes you – their skills, which leaves you wondering where they draw their passions from.

Yet they say, they never imagined that they were cut for the sport.

“While playing football is not something that we were willing to do, it turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to us,” the duo told Nation Sport, on the sidelines of their team’s training - Beijing Raiders in Mathare Slum, Nairobi.

Atamba’s memory of her childhood may be vague, but she vividly remembers how her jobless grandmother, whom she lived with in Mathare Slum, often struggled to fend for her family. Schooling, therefore, was an elusive dream to her.

And with hopelessness taking a toll on her, she found herself in the company of street children, wandering about on the dusty and stench-filled streets of the slums, forced to survive on alms from Good Samaritans. Then, she was only six years old.

“I never knew I could go to school, because my grandmother was not in a position to fund my education. At home, food was never there, that is why I often opted for the streets,” she recalled.

For Robi, since her parents could not afford to enroll her into a school, due to lack of school fees, she found herself dealing in illegal drugs trade as her only means for survival.

“This is what most of my friends were doing. Our role was to deliver bhang to various places within the slum (Mathare) and after sometimes, I also started using it,” she recounted.

The two girls are amongst the more than 60, whose poor backgrounds took a turn for the better, after they joined Beijing Raiders – the girl’s football team at Mcedo Beijing School in Mathare.

The team’s co-founder, and coach Mark Okwiri says passion for the game, and the desire to help improve the livelihood of girls in the community was the drive behind its formation, sometime in 2006.

“We (alongside Benedict Kiage, the director of Mcedo Beijing School) decided to have a team purely for the girl child to keep them in school. We had a vision that one day, the girls would also put food on the table using football and to me, I can see that happening soon,” said the former Otieno Oyoo High School football team’s captain.

“We have five girls in the university now, several in colleges and there are some in high school. Around 60 girls have gone through the system of government education, of which their parents could not afford.”

At Mcedo Beijing School a program is in place where talented footballers from humble backgrounds do not pay a penny for their primary and secondary education.

The school also entered into an agreement with some of the top football - girls’ secondary schools in the country, where they are free to raid Beijing Raiders of its top talents and provide them with education scholarships.

They include Homa Bay’s Kobala Mixed Secondary School, Nairobi’s Dagoretti Mixed Secondary School, West Pokot’s St Theresa's Tartar Girls High School and Kisumu’s Nyakach Girls High School.

For the girls’ college education, Beijing Raiders have partnered with Hope Worldwide Kenya under the Dreams program.

After completing their primary education at Mcedo Beijing School, Atamba and Robi landed scholarships at Kobala Mixed Secondary School.

Atamba was part of the team that lost in semifinals, at the 2015 East Africa Secondary School Games held in Rwanda, an experience that has remained nostalgic to her.

“Life is much better now and I thank my coach (Okwiri) for that because he is the one who got me out of the streets. Since then, football has done a lot of good things in my life. Visiting Rwanda for the school games was the best thing to me,” said Atamba, who has been Beijing Raiders captain since she joined in 2007.

Alongside Robi, they were instrumental in the team’s success in the 2020 Chapa Dimba na Safaricom Nairobi Region, where they thumped defending champions Acakoro Ladies 6-0 to reclaim the title they first won in 2018.

Their outstanding performance in the 2020 Chapa Dimba na Safaricom earned them a call up to the Harambee Starlets provisional squad that was preparing for the Turkish Women’s Cup that took place in March.

They never made it to the final squad that emerged third in the competition.

But even with the school fees burden relieved off their shoulders by the school, the duo’s journey to the top, alongside other players at Beijing Raiders has not been easy.

For training, they have been forced to cope with the small triangular, dusty and rocky space in front of Mcedo Beijing School, which has a hill on the sideline.

Often, the training is interrupted by people passing in the middle of the playground, while going about their activities. “We love football, and if we spend a long time without playing, we just feel not right. We just have to persevere. Again since most people here (Mathare) are indulging in various vices, the only way to avoid them during our free time is to go and play,” said Robi.

She added that at times they are also forced to walk several kilometres to honour matches in various tournaments.

For training and playing kits, they always depend on gifts for winning competitions.

According to Okwiri, while the team has triumphed in various competitions, his greatest achievement is seeing the girls realise their education dreams through football.

“When the girls go school and get the certificates without paying any cent, it is my greatest achievement,” he said adding that his goal is to see the team grow into an academy.

Thanks to the partnership with Hope Worldwide Kenya, Atamba and Robi are currently undertaking a Hair Dressing and Beauty Course at KCITI Technical College in Nairobi.

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