Homeward Bound
Sports columnist Ed Willes blogs about a variety of subjects, some sports-related, some not.
The romantic in you wants to believe every Right To Play trip to Africa works this way; that every athlete connects with every kid and both are enriched by the experience.
The realist in you also knows that’s not the case. In the end, it’s easy to have all the best intentions and say all the right things but the real test of the humanitarian is to open your mind and your heart to the culture and the people; to give of yourself completely; to, and we can’t stress this strongly enough, play the Mingle-Mingle Game as if your life depended on it.
Maybe you can’t expect everyone to step up the way Clara Hughes, Emily Brydon, Steve Omischl and Mellisa Hollingsworth stepped up in Ghana these last five days. Then again, maybe that should be the expectation. But you should know, the four Canadian athletes who travelled to west Africa conducted themselves with courage and grace under some trying circumstances and everyone in our country should be proud of them.
Just don’t tell them I said that because we shared many a fine fart joke over the last week.
“What I do isn’t important,” said Hughes, the only athlete in Olympic history who’s won multiple medals in both the summer and winter games who also served as the team’s unofficial captain. “What I do with the success I have is important because maybe I can contribute one micro-ounce to the human condition and tilt it a little to the more positive side.
“I won that gold medal (in the women’s 5,000 metres in Turin) because of Right To Play. I wanted to share that. The more I can speak about it the happier I am. I will move mountains to do more.”
Which means someone should warn the mountains.
This post is being written on the flight back to New York the morning after the farewell dinner in Accra and, all things considered, it might have been time to leave to Ghana. I personally have exhausted my supply of Immodium and most of Omischl’s. We’re all running on too little sleep and too much travel which makes it difficult to process everything we’ve seen and felt. But we also know we are bringing more than a collection of toxic underwear back to Canada.
“I knew I was going to see some pretty awful things,” said Omischl. “I just didn’t know how I was going to feel about it. Now I feel like it’s the greatest thing I’ve ever done.”
And that’s not a minority opinion.
The Canadians wrapped up their tour on Thursday by rising at 5:30 a.m., in the northern town of Tamale, flying back to Accra, grabbing some breakfast at the hotel, then heading out to a refugee camp which is populated largely by victims of the civil war in nearby Liberia. This is not a happy place. After sharing magic with school children all over Ghana, the athletes ran into some hard cases at this camp. The kids were older – some of them looked like they were close to 20. One of them made a lewd comment to one of the women. Not surprisingly, the group was a little more subdued when they left the playground on the bus.
“We wanted to see how raw the conditions were and how vulnerable the children are when we can over here,” said Hollingsworth. “And we’ve been lucky. The places we’ve gone we’ve seen we can make a difference. The refugee camp was different.”
But there was still light in the darkness. Hollingsworth connected with one teenage boy who talked to her about his ambitions. He wanted to be a famous footballer, of course, but he said his bigger dream was to become a doctor. He said his father is a doctor who spoke seven different languages. Intrigued, Hollingsworth asked where his father is now and that brought an end that part of the conversation.
“I wanted to learn more about him,” she said. “Everyone at that camp had a story to tell but he didn’t want to tell his.”
And that’s too bad because, this time, people there wanted to hear it which brings us back to our original point.
A little over a year ago, Canadian Right To Play director Warren Spires approached Hughes about assembling a team to travel to Ghana in the spring of ‘08 to position the organization for 2010. One of the more endearing traits about RTP is its absolute ruthlessness about spreading its gospel and Hughes set about to identify athletes who were outgoing and socially aware but also serious medal threats in Vancouver – the theory being the shinier the medal, the louder the voice. You have to admit, those types don’t exactly grow on trees but, in the end, the Winnipeg-born speedskater found three disparate personalities from three different disciplines and, together, they found chemistry by the bucketful in west Africa.
“I told them, ‘You want perspective? You want motivation and inspiration?,” Hughes said, recounting her recruitment spiel. “This will give it to you on a daily basis. You’ll never forget this trip and when things get tough for you, you will remember some of the kids you’ve met and the things you’ve seen.”
And that became the manifesto for the Right To Play tour. Each of the four athletes – Hughes; Omischl, the best aerialist in the world; Brydon, the courageous alpine skier; Hollingsworth, the bronze-medal winner in the skeleton in Turin – threw themselves unreservedly into the programs and each created their own special energy with the kids. You also knew they weren’t doing it for the TV cameras because there weren’t any TV cameras around to do it for.
On the very first day at the very first playground, for example, Hughes, who’s possessed of a magnificent mane of red hair, found herself playing with a group of kids who kept pointing at her and giggling. What is it, she thought? Broccoli in my teeth? Toilet paper stuck to my shoe? Finally, a boy asked the question which had been driving his schoolmates crazy.
“He looked at me and said, ‘We all want to know, how is your hair so bouncy?” Hughes said. “And then he started bouncing up and down and singing, “Bouncy. Bouncy.” Then all his friends came over and started touching my hair.”
Brydon, for her part, didn’t really need any lessons in perserverance or motivation. Seven years ago, she underwent two major reconstructive knee surgeries. Doctors told her she would never ski again but she was back in time for the 2002 Olympics and she earned two podium finishes on the World Cup circuit this season.
Still, that isn’t her most impressive talent. Easily the most hilarious segment of every stop came when the schoolchildren, their volunteer leaders and various onlookers gathered around to hear the Canadians explain their sport. Ghanians, for starters, aren’t real clear on the concept of snow and were even more befuddled by the idea of skiing on it.
But that didn’t deter Brydon. After several attempts to explain skiing through elaborate pantomine, Brydon grabbed six kids at a schoolyard in remote Bolgatanga on Wednesday, lined them up in a makeshift slalom course, then tore through them and even brushed against the last couple for that added touch of realism.
Don’t know if those kids understood skiing any better but they did get a kick out of Brydon’s performance art.
“Everything is just too fresh to process,” she said of her experience here. “It’s a lot to take in. When I’ve had some time to decompress I’ll understand it more fully. But I know that every one of those kids has touched me in a different way.”
She can also say she’s returned the favour.
