‘Voy! I’m coming!’: The blind footballers of South Sudan

Before the blind league, ‘ I had totally lost hope ‘

While coaches and player siblings bang on goalposts to aid in their shots, the game’s participants play with a ball that jingles. Players shout “voy” (“I’m coming” in Spanish) to warn opponents of their approach and minimise injuries.

Blindfolds are worn by all players to ensure that their vision is equal.

According to Madol, it’s a way for players to regain confidence in their bodies, gain self-awareness, and form relationships with other players who are dealing with similar situations.

After practice, Ellon enjoys drinks and biscuits with his teammates off the pitch. He claims that despite having sight since birth, he started having vision issues when he was three years old. “Many people said I was bewitched”, he recalls.

Ellon never received proper care because there were no funds to pay for them and there were no money to pay for them. By the age of 12, he had lost vision.

As a child, he had been an avid footballer but for the first two years of his blindness, he was stuck at home. “I was frustrated and disappointed. I could not go to school. The worst part of it all was that I completely lost hope and didn’t play football.

Ellon’s mother, a nurse and government official, eventually heard of the Rajap Center for the Blind in Juba. “I remember asking my mother, how was such a school possible? I didn’t believe I would meet more people like me”, Ellon says. His mother picked him up and dropped him off at Rajap each day until he got his bearings and practiced using a cane because that was his biggest challenge at the time.

Source: Aljazeera