You can tell I’m a footballer by my toes. They’re not soft, they’re not straight and most of them don’t even touch their neighbouring toe. They splay out like duck’s feet without the bit in between. They don’t look anything like the feet on the pedicure poster in my sister, Eliza’s salon. Those feet are a light nutty brown, the toes are lined up, tight together, like pencils in a tin and the nails are long and sharp and painted dark purple with silver sparkles and stars. I don’t think I’ll ever need a pedicure, even when I’m grown up. I’ve never had to cut my toenails. They break off and get filed down when I play football. And I’ve played football since the time I started to walk. That’s what my mum told me. She says I was born to play football. It’s the sand from the pitch, and the ball, rubbing against my feet. I don’t have to pay to get them filed, not like all those women who come to Eliza’s salon and stick their feet into plastic machines that overflow with bubbly water. They gossip for hours while their feet are scrubbed and scraped and massaged and their nails are filed and painted. What a waste of time. There’s not a day in the year when I’m not at football practice at Mbuyuni, with Zainab and Alice and the rest of the team and I know I won’t ever have time in my life for things like pedicures.
Wonky toes are a downside of taking my football talent seriously. I’ve already broken three toes on my right foot and three on my left. Dr Mwenza said that’s too many broken toes for a 13-year-old. I cracked my first one when I was seven. That was a pinky, and now it sticks out to the side a bit. I broke three toes in one go last year. The only good thing about it was that it was the last game of the season, the regional final, so I was injured when there was no football to be played. The rest of it was all bad because:
- The defender broke my toes 100% on purpose
- She was wearing football boots and I wasn’t
- She weighed over 80kg
- She stamped on my foot like she was trying to kill a family of centipedes
- My toes ended up looking like squashed centipedes
- One tear escaped from my left eye when I blinked
- I had to be carried off the pitch by coach Asha
- It was 2-0 to us when I got injured. I’d scored both of the goals
- We lost the match
Eliza says my toes look like Adbul Karim’s teeth. Which I think is a bit unfair on me and Abdul Karim. Ok, he does have teeth the colour of weathered tomb stones, that lean in different directions. He’s got big gaps too and, if you bump into him after lunch time, you’ll see green and brown bits in his teeth, because, every day, he gets ugali and sukuma wiki and mbuzi mchuzi at Judy’s Joint. Abdul Karim doesn’t speak but he loves to smile at everyone. That’s because he gets sent out on the streets by his family to beg for money. A big smile gets him more money – even with the food stuck in between his teeth. My toes are a bit straighter than Abdul Karim’s teeth but Eliza’s jokes about his teeth and my toes are just mean. None of us are perfect and, in my opinion, her bum looks like a giant-sized party balloon that could pop at any moment. She wears clothes that are way too tight and sometimes you can actually see the wrinkly dimples in her bum cheeks through her skirts. It’s gross but I never say it, because, if I did, she’d probably slap me and I’ve had enough slaps from her over the years.
I don’t need straight toes, anyway. When I grow up, I’m always going to be wearing football boots or trainers so no one will be looking at my toes. They’ll be real Adidas ones, not the fakes from China that we get around here with only two stripes and Adidas spelt Abibas. I’ll get new pairs every year because I’ll be playing for a professional team in Europe. Right now, I can’t quite afford football boots. Or trainers. Or a football. But that doesn’t mean I’m not using my talent. When I juggle my football, made of newspaper and bread bags and sisal string, the touch on my toes, wonky or not, is so sweet. My record is 152 juggles. Zainab is the next best juggler in our team with 36. You see, I spend a lot of time practicing. There’s no point having talent, if you don’t work on it. That’s what mum said. Every day, I wake up at 5.30am and do my work out on the tiny strip of concrete that’s our balcony, outside our front door, running on the spot, boxing punches, star jumps, lunges and burpies. I’ve got a graze on my knuckles from where I accidently hit the wall doing a star jump. It’s a bit cramped up there. Once I’ve worked up a sweat I go downstairs with my ball and pepeta – that’s keepy-uppies in Swahili – outside Abdi’s bakery. There’s a bit more space there, in the dust under the neem tree, where I sell chapatis later in the day. The sun begins to poke its way out from behind the bakery and it feels like the smell of Abdi’s cinnamon rolls is pulled up and out with the sun. Abdi says he likes hearing the rhythm of my juggling as he kneads the dough for the mahamri. I think it might be my favourite time of day. It’s quiet, I haven’t yet had a run in with Eliza and I am practising what I was put on this world to do. 152 juggles is not bad but I have set myself a target for this year. By December 31st I want my record to be 300. And I know I’m going to make it.
