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Kenya‘s young footballers look to play way out of slumDate : 18/02/2009 Publication
: German Press Agency dpa Category
: Feature
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On a hill overlooking the shacks of the sprawling
Kibera slum in the Kenyan capital Nairobi, a cloud of red dust rises up from a bumpy patch of wasteland.
The creators of the eye-stinging cloud, The Lucky Boyz football team - 10 young boys in flip flops and tattered shoes - pass a ball around under the watchful eye of their coach.
When the drill is over and the dust begins to settle, scrawny 13-year-old Kevin Andugo, nicknamed Ballack, takes a rest from the midday heat.
"Playing football helps me forget my problems at home," says Andugo, who has five brothers and one sister. "My father goes to work as a cleaner, but he earns little. Sometimes I get to eat nothing."
Andugo is one of 3,000 youngsters who play in the football leagues of Kibera Mpira Mtaani (Kibera Village Football), an organization dedicated to giving kids, many of them orphans, living in grinding poverty some kind of direction.
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