A Jungle Match

View from Foengoe Island, Suriname

No matter where I’ve traveled, the one thing everyone seems to agree on is soccer. Not teams, or players, or the proper name—yes, I know it’s really football to many—but a desire to watch. Or even better, to play.

Finding a game is always an easy way to make friends while traveling. And the beauty is, there is always a match, whether in a remote lodge in Patagonia after a grueling twelve-hour hike, an open courtyard in Jordan while smoking shisha, or a stadium filled with screaming fans in Seville.

But my favorite soccer games took place not in front of a TV, or even in a stadium, but on a grass airstrip on Foengoe Island in the Central Suriname Nature Reserve, where I spent six months working with a University of Florida capuchin monkey research project. The matches were always held early evening, since we spent our long, steamy days chasing those monkeys.

Suriname

We had to arrange the games several days in advance so we could get a pick-up by canoe from Foengoe Island—the park headquarters and our civilization. Or at least a remote outpost of civilization, with tourist lodges and a radio that reached the capital. As for our own radio, it barely reached the edges of our study area, certainly not the island.

We’d talk about the coming game all day while following our capuchins through the jungle, excited to escape our isolated cabin. To have a break from nights reading or playing cards. To do anything new. At the first roar of a boat engine, no matter how distant, we’d race down to the river to watch the dugout canoe, made from a hallowed tree trunk, glide to a stop alongside our rock beach.

Capuchin Monkey

We’d clamber onto the wooden plank seats and the boat driver would steer the canoe’s small outboard motor back into the current. Depending on the season, we’d either fly along the top of overflowing brown water or meander carefully around the jutting rocks of the receding riverbed.

We always docked just above the swirling rapids and climbed the hill to the airstrip. I’d sit in the grass on the sidelines, sometimes alone if I was the only female researcher, the surrounding jungle quiet except for the low roar of howler monkeys and parrots, always in pairs, squawking a noisy greeting as they passed into the sleepy sun tumbling toward the jungle canopy. The air always soft and quiet, bathed in a halo of blue.

But on the field, that strip of grass surrounded by jungle for hundreds of miles, the men screamed and grunted and pushed and shoved, their feet bare, their shadows long and tangled.

It was only ever men. The women weren’t invited to play. I didn’t have a problem with that given I’d gone toe-to-toe with ten-year-old girls in Suriname and been outmatched. Plus I already had my war injury from a barefoot soccer game on the sands of Cadiz, Spain—a broken toe that never did properly heal. And the men played to win. Anything allowed.

They were all researchers or Maroon and Amerindian guides and boat drivers, very rarely a passing tourist. The play was rough and sweaty and taken way too seriously. But always beautiful against that backdrop of a jungle sunset, the canopy shadow stretching to cover us in dark as the moon rose over the river. And always followed by a swim and a cold beer, if one could be found.

Those are memories I’ll never forget, the excitement and beauty of a simple game, in a setting with no match.

The Lonely Art of Wrestling Stereotypes

In parks and sporting arenas all over India, you’ll see young people, almost always boys, playing cricket, soccer, even rugby in their spare time or in competitions. But if you walk through certain public cricket maidans (open spaces) in Mumbai, you may see a rare and peculiar sight – a young, rather slight woman sumo wrestling with her brother.

Even more surprising is that twenty-four-year-old Hetal Dave (pronounced "dhaah-vay") is the country’s first competitive sumo wrestler, possibly the only one. No doubt the country’s only female practicing the ancient Japanese sport.

Dave started out learning and mastering judo before moving on to sumo, but not without quite a few obstacles. For one thing, India has no sumo rings for her to practice in or other female sumo wrestlers to practice with. She also comes from a very conservative Brahmin community in which anything unconventional is frowned upon, so imagine their reaction when she announced her new career. Fortunately, her immediate family has been encouraging and supportive. But while Dave practices regularly with her brother, it's been an uphill battle finding steady sponsorship to be able to travel abroad to compete against other women in international tournaments.

Occasionally, she is able to find a sponsor, such as last year, when she competed in Estonia, where she placed fifth. Not having her own mawashi, the cloth belt that sumo wrestlers wear, Dave had to borrow one from the Japanese, who then cheered her on at that competition. The Indian public, especially many young Indian women, have been inspired by Dave’s passion and singular ambition.

Sumo wrestling as a professional, competitive sport is observed only in Japan, where women are not allowed to play except at the amateur level. In fact, women are not allowed to even touch a professional sumo ring in Japan because of the "impurities" they may impart. As a result, it's not a sport that many women anywhere, particularly in Japan, choose to take up.

Not counting Dave though. If she can continue finding sponsors, she hopes to continue competing and improving her skills. In the meantime, she works as a part-time school teacher to support herself. Even as she keeps breaking down barriers – both in sports and in society.

Want to see Hetal Dave in action? Take a look:

Laleh Seddigh - The Fastest Woman in Iran

Iran is a country of excellent drivers. If you’ve ever climbed into a Tehran taxi and saw your life flash before your eyes as the driver wove madly in and out of traffic, headed the wrong way down one-way streets, ignored red lights, and seemed bent on breaking the sound barrier, this statement may be difficult to believe. The statistics would back up your impression: 28,000 fatal accidents per year nationwide, according to 2008 figures. And yet to simply survive everyday traffic in an Iranian city, a driver must have great reflexes and strong driving skills.

One of Iran’s most fearless drivers is Laleh Seddigh, the country’s top female race-car driver, who can negotiate congestion on Vali-Asr Avenue as easily as she does a racetrack. Her friends joke that she learned her skills on the streets of Tehran, where anything goes.

Seddigh (whose first name, Laleh, means tulip in Farsi) is the eldest of four and the daughter of an industrialist whose four factories produce furnaces and engine parts. She learned to drive at the age of 13 and totaled her first car at 17, when she smashed into a tree and broke her leg in four places. (Yes, I know that doesn’t sound like good driving, but she improved.)

She began her racing career in 2000, at the age of 23, but was only allowed to compete against other women at first. Then, in 2004, she petitioned the Iranian Racing Federation to let her participate in men’s races. Her timing was good. The reformist era under President Khatami had not yet come to an end, and many of the restrictive Islamic rules were being relaxed, with Internet cafes, coffee bars, and women in tight-fitting hejab common sights in Tehran. Seddigh explained to the board that separation of the sexes was not in keeping with the president’s reform efforts, and she pointed out that the Federation officials would enter the history books as the people who allowed men and women to race together.

Still, she needed clerical approval, so Seddigh and her father asked an ayatollah to issue a fatwa (religious degree) stating that male and female race-car drivers competing together was in keeping with Islamic principles. The ayatollah agreed with the stipulation that the female athletes adhere to the Islamic dress code. Not a difficult proposal, considering that even the men are covered from head to toe in helmets, gloves, and fireproof suits.

When her petition was approved, Seddigh became the first female athlete to compete against men in Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, not only in auto racing but in any other sport as well.

But she still had more obstacles to overcome. After completing her first mixed-gender race, in which she placed third, not one of her competitors congratulated her, and she was disciplined after waving to her jubilant female fans. Every time she wins a race, the TV networks suspend live coverage of the awards ceremony to avoid giving her publicity. You’d think the lack of coverage would make her victory seem a much bigger event that it actually is. After all, when does live programming ever get interrupted except to announce a huge event: a devastating earthquake, the death of a president, the signing of a peace accord?

In 2007, Seddigh was banned from racing for a year for a technical violation. Under international racing rules, every car must have its engine sealed prior to entering a race to ensure that no illegal modifications are performed at the last minute. When Seddigh’s first-line car developed mechanical trouble, she used an alternate that had no engine seal. Although she received advance approval for the alternate car, after the race, the Iranian Racing Federation ruled that she’d been competing in the wrong category and imposed the year-long-ban. This event occurred after the conservative president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, took office, which raises speculation that the Federation was looking for a way to get rid of this high-profile, female competitor.

Seddigh protested and pointed out that men had also used alternate cars with unsealed engines in previous races but had only been fined for the violation not banned from the sport.

These days, she’s back on the circuit, though. Earlier this year, Seddigh earned her International Racing Driving License during the BMW School Series in Bahrain and can apply her skills at the international level.

Now that Laleh Seddigh has not only broken through Iran’s formidable gender barrier but made it onto the international circuit as well, we can expect to see a lot more of the fastest woman in Iran.

It's Just Not Cricket*

(Photo: B. Sandman)

On April 2, a most spectacular event occurred: India won its first Cricket World Cup in 28 years. I know it was spectacular because even though I don’t follow much of the sport, a global cheer was heard from Indians around the world. It’s a surprise the Internet didn’t shut down with all the high-five-ing that occurred on every social media outlet the instant the winning wicket was won.

Which, of course, led to the most popular joke going viral that day: “good luck getting IT support on the phone.” Clearly, ethnic Indians everywhere were taking the day off to watch the match. And then the rest of the week to party.

But amidst all the jubilation, there was also this major feel-good moment, one I wanted to embrace but couldn’t quite wrap my head around. Indians everywhere felt united by this victory – we were all just one big, happy family. It sounded so positive, so right, but felt so … off. I couldn’t put my finger on it at the time, nor did I really give it much thought. (I mean, it was only cricket, right?)

Until I read this article.  

Novelist Manu Joseph crystallized my sentiments perfectly when he called this group hug “a deceptive sense of wellbeing.” In India alone, Joseph so aptly explains, daily life “is a fierce contest between the affluent and the educated on the one side, and the brooding impoverished on the other. The pursuit of India’s elite is to protect themselves from India – from its crowds, dust, heat, poverty, politics, governance and everything else that is in plain sight. To achieve this, they embed themselves in their private islands that the forces and the odors of the republic cannot easily penetrate.”

And, he says, “The islands that protect Indians from India are simple and material: A luxurious car with an unspeaking driver who works for 12 hours every day at less than $200 a month, or at least an S.U.V. with strong metal fenders that can absorb routine minor accidents. A house in a beautiful residential community that the Other Indians can enter only as maids and drivers. Membership in an exclusive club. Essentially a life in a bubble…”

Joseph’s theory brings to mind the title of an old book, A Million Mutinies Now, in which Nobel-winning author V.S. Naipaul calls post-colonial India “a country of a million little mutinies.” In the 20 years since he wrote this travelogue, the disparities have only widened – maybe it’s a billion little mutinies now.

Our group hug wasn’t even fleeting – it was just delusional.

Within a week of India’s World Cup victory, two of the country’s activists went on hunger fasts to force the government to introduce anti-corruption legislation. Though the divide between the haves and have-nots are appalling, and the nation’s bureaucracy and corruption staggering, these powerful stances reminded many people of Mahatma Gandhi’s nonviolent resistance movement and aroused feelings of patriotism among even the most skeptical. Again, global cheers – way to go, men! Show them how it’s done.

Within days, the men called off their fasts when government officials agreed to form a committee aimed at studying the corruption committed by, er, government officials. Woohoo… we … gulp ... won.

Meanwhile, not far off in the Middle East, change has arrived sooner. The ongoing Arab Spring is far from over, but it prompted one observer to wonder if the “heady jasmine scent from North Africa” could “waft across the Arabian Sea to India.”

Soon, I’m thinking, very soon.

In the meantime, there you have it – everything I know about sports, in a nutshell.

* My thanks to Alli for this great headline. "It's just not cricket" is an Aussie term that means "having something that is unjust or just plain wrong done to someone or something. It comes from the game of cricket, which is regarded as a gentleman’s game, where fair play is paramount."