‘Whoa! ‘I’m coming!’: South Sudan’s blind footballer soccer
Before the Blind League, ‘I had completely lost hope’
In the game, participants play with a ball that jiggles while coaches and players’ siblings hit goalposts to help them make shots. Players shout “Voy” (“I’m coming” in Spanish) to warn opponents of their approach and reduce injuries.
All players are blindfolded to ensure the same level of vision.
It’s a way for players to gain confidence in their bodies, learn to move without fear, and connect with other players facing similar situations, Madol says.
After practice, Elon enjoys drinks and biscuits with his teammates outside the field. He explains that he was born with vision, but at the age of three he started having vision problems. “Many people said I was bewitched,” he recalls.
Elon never received proper care due to the lack of health care specialists in South Sudan and the lack of money to pay for them; By the age of 12, he was blind.
As a child, he was an avid footballer, but for the first two years of his blindness, he was stuck at home. “I was dejected and disappointed. I couldn’t go to school. I had completely lost hope and not playing football was the worst part of it.”
Elon’s mother, a nurse and government official, eventually heard about the Rajap Center for the Blind in Juba. “I remember asking my mother, how was such a school possible? I didn’t believe I’d meet more people like me,” says Elon. At the time, learning to navigate without sight was his biggest challenge, so his mother would pick him up and drop him off to Rajp every day until he recovered and learned to use a stick.
Soon, he learned Braille script, was performing well in exams and moved to an ordinary school in 2019. “There, I was also changing the mindset of teachers and students after learning that disability is not a disability,” he explains. Al Jazeera.
