Living in Peru : your everyday companion

Kei Kamara is a football placer from Sierra Leona. He plays for the American league and also works as an ambassador for Right to Play, a non profit organization which uses football as a way to help children in war torn countries or extreme poverty situations. Its message is one of solidarity.

As he masters a ball on his head football player Kei Kamara makes it evident why he has come here. In another time and with some very different luck he might have ended up dead, a victim of the bullets which managed to kill so many other dreams and tear apart his country. Kamara is a talented young man who managed to flee Sierra Leona and who now shows of what years of athletic training have taught him in the United States, the country which took him in as a refugee when he was in his teens. Teaching kids a few of his professional footballer tricks is what allows him to give back the happy moments he was able to have thanks to having been rescued.  

Kamara is 24 years old. He plays for the Houston Dynamo’s major league American football team. He is meant to be traveling with his team mates in England to play a few matches there; he however asked to be excused from some of those games so he could fulfill other commitments which he considers equally important, his humanitarian visits. He is an ambassador for Right to Play, a nonprofit organization which promotes games and sport as a way to educate children and adolescents living difficult situations involving violence and poverty.

Kamara knows this because both things plague his earliest memories. His home country Sierra Leona was in a state of civil war for 20 years. He spent half this time at risk. “I have seen my friends die on the streets. I have lost family members because of the conflict. It was a very difficult life”, he remembers. Due to contacts with American citizens Kei was able to travel to the U.S. were his mother had emigrated when he was very young. He has no doubt that was the best way for him to be saved. His new destination, California was a different world.

“The change was a big one. There, in the U.S., I could go to school for free, something that was not possible in Sierra Leona. After school I got to study at university with a sport scholarship because I played football. I had many opportunities.” he says. 

Kamara chose the career of physical education. The fields were he used to practice were also used by the Los Angeles Galaxy football team to train. He was able to watch the players in real life while others only watched through the TV screen. Two years later he joined the league. His life kept changing; he traveled to Mexico, El Salvador, and Panama. By then he had heard of Right to Play.

“One of my first coaches told me about the organization. I told myself that when I had the opportunity I would participate. I wanted to help because when I was a child someone helped me.”

Kei has taught children in Chosica and at the Antonianas de Maria School were he played different games. In one game 7 boys and 7 girls are selected to play a game which teaches children not to be prejudiced. The game consists of the 7 members of the team standing together and passing a small red ball from player to player behind their backs. The other team must guess which player is holding the ball. The ball represents disease, most of all AIDS. The name of the game is “don’t trust your eyes” and it teaches children not to discriminate people because of their appearance.

The first Right to Play program in Peru has already pledged to help children in Lambayeque, Huaraz and Puno. The idea is for other Peruvian and international athletes continue with this work. “The game is powerful” says Kamara. Few things have its strength and resonance.  

News source: El Comercio

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