Iraq and the whole Islamic world. In this sacred day, most Moslems go to mosques to have Friday prayer at noon ,but before and after the prayer lot of things are to be done which people want to do and they can’t do in the other six days of a week.
For me ,I have a day off once a week due to my demands and to those of my colleagues in the office , most of the time ,I'd prefer the other days than Friday .
My last day off was totally different from the others as I made it on Friday. I decided to go to the near by soccer field to see what is going there. I heard that some young athlete from my neighborhood made great efforts to have small the children in Amil neighborhood who are fond of soccer in a training school in that soccer field .I was so eager to witness such a thing and to watch my nephew Sajad who had joined that school a week ago .The school opens on holidays only .
I was surprised and happy to see the great number of players ( children of course) in that field .The field is about 80 meters long and 40 meters wide, but there were 8 coaches or trainers and more than a hundred children . Each trainer has (15 to 20 children) who are between 6 to 10 years old. There is a trainer with a separated group of kids from 11 to 14 years old. When I went there I took my 2 years old nephew to let him see his cousin playing football.
They both, the two years old, Mohammad and Sajad ,who is 10 years old, were happy to be in that field to do what they want to do with some instructions from the trainer and their uncle. The trainers give the boys some information and skills of soccer with space of training on the field. The boys had been given sport shoes, shorts and T-shirts of famous clubs in the world .The T-shirts are of Barcelona, Spain, Inter Milan and Juventus of Italy, Liverpool and Chelsea of England and Argentinean national team.
They might possibly choose those T-shirts for the kids as a kind of motivation to encourage them to play well wearing the shirts of famous teams who can only watch them on T.V .They lack balls as they have 4 to five balls for a team of 15 to 20 players. I decided to do something about this matter.
I had really great time for more than an hour and then minutes later I was in Bab Al-Sharji , a central market in Baghdad for sport stuff. I bought 29 balls to be given a gift for the school to be used by the kids. I gave them to my brother who is a friend of one of the trainers to be delivered for them. My brother told that the trainers and the kids were so happy to have this gift which the kids used them already.
My brother told that they were asking for me to be on a camera to be recorded! I said this thing is so simple for the efforts those athletes do to have the kids do something good for themselves, families and their country.

Wow! What a wonderful thing for you to do. "No one makes a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little," said Edmund Burke, an 18th century Irish politician. Your "little" is magnificient!
Posted by: Judith | March 23, 2008 at 09:51 PM