A soccer star caught in poverty, a risky trip and a sorrowful end
>> The pregame warm-up for the Red Scorpions, Gambia’s top women’s soccer team, used to begin with joyful singing and dancing. But now the players in their yellow shirts and blue shorts begin every match in a sombre prayer circle under the shade of a baobab tree.
Three months ago, the team’s star goalkeeper, Fatima Jawara, 19, was presumed drowned off the coast of Libya while trying to escape to Europe, dreaming of finally breaking her family free of poverty and of finding a broader stage for her skills.
“The only thing she would talk about was how one day she would make our mother and all of us happy,” said her sister, Oumi Jawara, recounting how Jawara was haunted by the suffering their mother went through over the family’s struggles for subsistence.
Hers is a fate shared by hundreds of others from her country and across West Africa who have died crossing the Mediterranean Sea or somewhere along the thousands of miles of treacherous desert to get there.
Thousands of Gambians have tried to make their way to Europe, according to the International Organization for Migration, which estimates that more than 4.3% of Gambians live outside the country, with many fleeing across the border into Senegal.
They were trying to escape the seemingly endless repression and lack of opportunity in Gambia, where President Yahya Jammeh has jailed or killed his opponents for years.
Jawara defies the stereotype of the kind of African migrant — typically rural, male and married — who sets off on the back way to Europe. Yet a surprising number of migrants include athletes hoping to join a European team for more attention and a better salary.
In November, Ali Mbengu, a popular Gambian wrestling champion, died along the migrant route. And in the past two years, the Gambian soccer federation said, more than 70% of players from various clubs have left the country.
The Gambian federation has been bombarded with requests from Italian and Spanish soccer clubs for information about Gambian players living in Europe who want to try out for their teams. The European clubs need a transfer certificate from the Gambian federation to allow the players to join new clubs in Europe.
Before she set out for Europe, Jawara was a star for the Red Scorpions. Her bubbly personality was the glue that held her team together. Her silly dance moves cracked everyone up. And her shouts of encouragement and her field skills inspired her teammates.
Jawara helped her team in winning several trophies in Gambia’s National Female Football League and had represented the country during the Women’s Under-17 World Cup in 2012 in Azerbaijan.
“I have not seen anyone that loves football more than Fatima,” said Fatou Fatty, the team’s captain. “She is the one that always encourages us to play. She even brought most of the girls into the team.”
Stories circulated among the Red Scorpions about other athletes who had fled to Europe and found success on teams there. But Jawara loudly encouraged her teammates to remain in Gambia. Maybe a scout would visit one day and sign them all to a European club, she would tell them. But surely their own country was bound to better organise its leagues. Bigger salaries could not be far off.
But at home, Jawara’s family was barely able to survive. In Serekunda, where she lived with her mother and a large extended family, Jawara struggled to make her life better. Every night, she sat alongside her mother while she sold fried fish and cakes outside their mud brick house. Between cooking large meals and giving her mother and sisters the small earnings she received from soccer matches, Jawara was the family’s main source of hope.
Their family were caught in the deteriorating Gambian economy, where the cost of living has soared even while most of the population makes less than US$1.90 a day, according to the World Bank.
Friends say that, in retrospect, Jawara most likely began to seriously consider leaving for Europe last April after a brawl on the field over a referee’s call during a major tournament. Ten players, including Jawara, were each suspended for 12 months. The team was fined and knocked down a division.
Jawara’s plan to save her family through her soccer career were shattered. She started looking for options to play elsewhere.
Awa Tamba, a teammate, recounts how Jawara had told them she had been contracted by a club in Dakar, Senegal, to play for two weeks.
Jawara called her family and teammates several times from Senegal. Then she set out on the long journey to Europe. News that she was headed there leaked out to her incredulous teammates. Just the year before, she had harshly scolded her brother for trying to make the trip.
“It is hard for me to be here and have to not see Fatima again for the rest of my life. But I believe it is the best place to be also,” boyfriend Kawuse Drameh said at the team training ground.