The soccer field is made of dust, the sidelines of encroaching jungle grass; cleats are bare feet, flip flops if they are lucky; uniforms are simply whatever clothes they have – t-shirts, long sleeve button-downs, slacks two sizes too short, rolled up jeans, a Yankees cap; three iron poles create a single net-less goal, far larger than regulation size. And the soccer ball? Donated.
This is soccer boiled down to its basics and the young men from the resettled IDP villages of Vadamunai and Utuchennai are eating it up at a training clinic from the Comite d’Aide Medicale’s psychosocial team and the government Sports Officer for Kiran Division. You see, these boys and men, some no older than 16, others already 25, never had a chance to learn how to play: They were fighting. Most members of this eighteen person team are former child soldiers recruited at the age of fourteen by the Liberation Tamil Tigers of Eelam (LTTE) from a now-defunct base on a hilltop just half a mile away.
Childhoods disrupted, war endured, families dispersed, and, finally, the slow return to normalcy: The 2008 resettlement of several hundred families in the most neat and ample sheet metal and UNHCR tarp homes of any resettled village yet – marigolds lining a garden path, a child’s drawing pasted on the front door, goats jostling in their shed; the rebuilding of a destroyed school; a busy harvest season; a visit from the Zonal Director of Education, Mrs. S. Chakkaravarthy, who lauds the work of NGOs like CAM for reinvigorating the drive, confidence and curiosity of once listless children and youth.
But for now, there is only the intense focus of the youth, gathered in the shade of a tree, listening as Aputhuraj Sivakummar, the Division Sports Officer, explains the rules of the game: This is a throw in, this is a corner kick, here is where the striker runs, this is the goal keeper’s domain. And then they train – running laps, passing drills, shooting drills, heading practice. Though serious in the shade, once playing, the boys’ laughter stretches across the school yard – shouts and screams and giggles on the wind.
Mr. Sivakkumar has been working with CAM to bring volleyball, soccer and handball clinics to five remote resettled villages in the savannas and jungle of eastern
Despite the unavoidable enthusiasm at the clinic, engaging the youth was a painstakingly slow process, CAM’s Psychosocial Advisor, Stanley Prabaharan, says. More skeptical than the women’s groups and less of a captive, curious audience than the school children, it took months of trust-building before the captain of the Utuchennai/Vadamunai soccer team called CAM, eager to know when the next training would be.
It was the sports that drew them in but the community that keeps them coming back. Go to a soccer field in Richmond, Virginia on a Saturday and any coach there can rattle off the list of psychological and social benefits of participating in a team sport: Developing trust and relationships; building a community; learning the skills of teamwork, communication, and diligence; gaining confidence, destressing and having an emotional outlet; building an identity.
Take those lessons to a dusty schoolyard hours down a dirt track in the jungle and rice paddies of Sri Lanka, where the scars of war remain, and you see the same joy, the same intensity on the faces of the players that you might find in Brookline, Massachusetts. The only difference is, here, this is as close to a therapeutic environment - to any outlet from years of violence and trauma, other than alcohol - that these young ex-combatants will likely ever get. The game is the focus, freeing them momentarily from the memories of the past and the demands of the present; the team operates as a support group; and the ball does the rest.
For now, they just play.
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