I wasn’t sure whether the British idiom ‘having your head turned’ translated well into Tigre or Tigrinya, the two most widely spoken languages in Eritrea. Given the widespread prevalence of torture in Eritrea, perhaps he took this in its literal meaning. Yet having a former revolutionary fighter with little or no footballing experience around the team seems like a strange move. Perhaps he wasn’t from the federation at all. Perhaps he was there to keep his one remaining good eye on the movements of the eighteen players. Perhaps it was his job to make sure all of them were present on the flight home. At least Negash Teklit’s loyalty is assured. He instructs his players to jog leisurely around the pitch for a few minutes. They meander along in their mismatched shirts in complete silence. The team trains for just a quarter of an hour, before walking slowly off the pitch. This is all we will see of them before the match.
‘I prepare them from the beginning, when they were in the Under 17s,’ Negash explains proudly on the side of the pitch once his players are out of earshot. ‘In my country the players start their playing in the home town at age five or six and are very talented players. The only problem is body constitution.’
Body constitution?
‘This is a matter of nature,’ he answers. Eritreans may have once dominated the Ethiopian national team but, thanks in part to Asmara’s altitude, they are better long-distance runners and road cyclists, the latter a cultural throwback to when Eritrea was part of the Italian empire. Eritrea are the current champions of cycling in Africa.
There was one image from the WikiLeaks cable about the 2009 incident in Kenya that had stayed with me:
Only the coach and an escorting colonel reportedly returned to Eritrea. (One wonders why, given their likely fate.)
There are no visible scars on Negash’s face or his hands. He had been deemed trustworthy enough to be allowed out of the country again, a rare honour. I ask him about 2009 and that incident. ‘Ahhhh, hrumph,’ he exhales, mincing the correct words in his mouth for a moment. ‘We have no problems with the players. Maybe some of the players are very childish to make the disappearance like that. But we have many players.’ He is shrugging his shoulders now, following the party line. It was actually a good thing the selfish players left. It is not just Eritrea’s problem, but one of African youth all over the world. They can emigrate from one country to another, chasing wealth. Eritrea doesn’t need them. Now there’s room for the new blood, new talent. ‘This generation, this team, is the best,’ he says a touch defiantly. ‘This is a special one.’ I almost believe him.
The real reason footballers and athletes defect from Eritrea at the first opportunity is much darker and more complex than envy, self-improvement, selfishness or poverty. Eritrea’s thirty-year civil war with Ethiopia was led by a Marxist insurgent, schooled in the art of discipline, self-sacrifice and extreme loyalty. Isaias Afewerki led the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front to victory against the Ethiopians in 1991, and his new country was recognised by the UN two years later. In power Afewerki has proved to be a ruthless tyrant. A 2011 Human Rights Watch report on Eritrea makes grim reading. It paints a picture of a country with zero civil society, zero democracy and zero accountability. Anyone who voices any opposition at all is labelled a traitor. They are thrown into jails and never heard of again. The few survivors who manage to escape tell horrific stories of journalists and opposition politicians being locked up for years in underground metal shipping containers buried in the desert in pitch darkness. When they eventually emerge, half mad, almost blind and crippled by the beatings, they seldom survive for more than a few months. Eritrea is also on a constant war footing, ready for its next inevitable conflict against its former occupier Ethiopia. National conscription is meant to last for eighteen months but, in reality, conscripts remain in the army for life, used as cheap labour for the government’s many business interests, especially gold mining. ‘Prolonged service, harsh treatment, and starvation wages are principal reasons for the hundreds of monthly desertions,’ the Human Rights Watch report concluded. ‘President Isaias said in 2010 that most deserters left for economic reasons or were “going on a picnic”.’
It is this fear, of ending up in a shipping container in the desert or in the looping, perpetual nightmare of conscription, that forces thousands of people a year to flee, or die trying. According to Human Rights Watch, ‘despite a “shoot-to-kill” policy for anyone caught trying to cross the country’s borders, thousands of refugees pour out of Eritrea to Sudan and Ethiopia’. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees reported in 2010 that, according to one estimate, close to 2,000 Eritreans escaped over the border every month. As many as 50,000 refugees were living in Ethiopian refugee camps. One-third of them were military deserters. No one knows how many Eritreans are shot dead before they make it, or how many are vaporised crossing the minefields that ring the country.
There may be discussions on the nature of freedom in Kagame’s Rwanda, but the young men of the Eritrean team – feeling the wind and the rains on their faces in Kigali as they trained – would never have tasted anything freer than this. The question was whether the temptation to leave would become too much. The Eritrean high command was confident, almost too confident, that they would return. What measures could they have put into place? Perhaps they chose players who had demonstrated only the most extreme party loyalty? Perhaps they had to pay a crippling deposit to make it into the team, a measure introduced a few years earlier that made a mockery of sport being the purest form of meritocracy? Perhaps their families were held and threatened, kept in a boiling hot shipping container under the desert until their sons, husbands or grandsons returned? No one could know for sure. If Negash Teklit knows, he is doing a good job of hiding it. He walks out of the stadium after talking to a few Rwandan journalists eager to know more about the mysterious Eritrean opponents. Embaye keeps a close eye on proceedings throughout.
Later that evening I talk to Micho. The last time I saw him he was on Eritrean national television, arm in arm with Negash in the post-match press conference. It is the first and only time I see him smile. He is holding court in front of what is left of Eritrea’s press corps. ‘We come to play in front of a crowd that knows where the football is!’ he states jovially. ‘They really know their football.’ He is almost charming. Yet, in Kigali, the relief is palpable. ‘It was like a wall had fallen on the whole country,’ he says of his time in Asmara. He swipes his hand slowly over his impenetrable face, mimicking a guillotine.
**
It is match day in Kigali. Police arrive in their dozens in open-back trucks. Wearing heavy military boots and carrying long black nightsticks, they jump on to the concrete as if about to quell an impending riot. The queue outside the Amahoro Stadium is quiet and orderly. A single line of men snakes backwards in silence. In the distance the ubiquitous wasp drone of the vuvuzela can be heard from the stands. A lone amputee propels himself along the side of the queue, asking for a spare ticket, but is ignored.
Inside Eritrea’s dressing room the team prepares in silence. Coach Negash is nowhere to be seen, but Kahsay Embaye is prowling around, slapping his players on the back in encouragement. He is wearing a brown suit and reflective aviator sunglasses. ‘I am like Moshe Dayan!’ he laughs when I compliment him on his eyewear. ‘I was fighting almost all my life. Everyone was fighting at that moment, the same as the Israelis.’ The war, for him, is ever-present. His skin is darker but the resemblance between Embaye and the brilliant Israeli military strategist is striking. For all the secrecy and suspicion, I am allowed to roam freely. The Eritrea team eye me with friendly curiosity. Few of the team speak English, except the team’s goalkeeper and captain, Daniel Goitom. Like Negash, Goitom’s loyalty has been proved. At thirty-two he is by far the team’s oldest player. Eight of the starting line-up were born in 1993, the year of independence. ‘It is a long journey,’ he says of the trip to Kigali via Sudan. ‘But I’ve been to Rwanda three times before.’ He didn’t play in the first game in Asmara. Samuel Alazar
, the player lobbed by Elias ‘Baby’ Uzamukunda to concede that important away goal for Rwanda, did. Alazar is nowhere to be seen either.
Each time Goitom has travelled overseas he has returned. He plays for Red Sea FC, Eritrea’s best club side. Four months previously thirteen members of that team defected and claimed asylum in Tanzania after a match. But not Goitom. I want to ask him why. Why did he return when his team-mates didn’t? What does he have in his life back in Asmara that his team-mates did not? Maybe he is an ideological purist, a loyalist who believes the embattled rhetoric of the government that the defections are all part of a CIA plot? Perhaps life is good for Goitom, better than it would be in the UN refugee camps he would have to live in for months before being sent somewhere alien and cold to rebuild his life? Perhaps he is scared? But I ask none of these questions. It is an hour before kick-off, before a once in a lifetime opportunity to try and qualify for the World Cup finals, so I stay quiet. ‘It will be a tough game,’ he says of today’s opposition. ‘We only have one chance to qualify for the World Cup. We have to be careful and concentrate.’
The Eritrea team, dressed in light blue shirts, is now standing in the tunnel waiting for their moment to emerge on to the pitch. Each player is assigned a Rwandan child with a cardboard ‘Brasil 2014’ hat wrapped around their foreheads. The Rwanda team join them. They do not speak to each other. FIFA’s World Cup anthem begins and the four lines – two teams, each player holding the hand of a child – walk through a white tunnel and into the noise. It is mid-afternoon on a Tuesday but the Amahoro is almost full, and we are deafened by the indiscriminate parping of a thousand vuvuzelas. The sun has emerged and a military brass brand is marching around the pitch. The musicians are young and the green uniforms they wear swamp their slight frames as they march. Rwanda’s prime minister is here and is introduced to the Eritrean and Rwandan players. Daniel Goitom and Rwanda’s captain, Olivier Karekezi, exchange pennants, Karekezi towering over his slightly built opposite number. The national anthems begin. The boys and girls in the oversized jackets play the two songs. They turn the Eritrea anthem into something both jovial and dark, like a New Orleans jazz funeral. And then the match begins.
Rwanda have gone into the game with a slight advantage, having scored an away goal in Asmara. Within four minutes both captains play a role in the moment that will define both teams’ fates. Goitom urged concentration in the dressing room, but makes a mess of Karekezi’s shot and the ball is in the back of the net. It is the first time I see and hear Rwandans act with abandon, their screams rising and falling as the ball approaches Eritrea’s goal. But Eritrea hold out until half-time. Micho has a face like thunder as he departs down the tunnel. The second half follows the same path as the first. Rwanda have all the possession. Sensing Goitom’s weakness on crosses and his lack of height, they pepper his goal with shots. He is short, much shorter than any goalkeeper I have ever met before. How many goalkeepers had fled Eritrea before they turned to him, I wondered. Two more goals follow, as the weight of pressure finally tells. It is 3-0. I am standing by the Rwandan goal now, watching as the Eritreans, tall and elegant, pass the ball with grace. With a few minutes left, Eritrea win a free-kick on the edge of the penalty area. It looks almost too close for a direct shot at goal but I watch as defender Abraham Tedros curls the ball over the Rwanda wall. It crashes into the net off the underside of the bar. It is every bit as technical and brilliant as a David Beckham free-kick, one of the best goals I have ever seen. But it is too late for Eritrea. They need two more goals to progress. Rwanda are nervous for a few minutes as Eritrea try to force an unlikely comeback but the referee blows his whistle. The match has finished 3-1, 4-2 on aggregate over the two matches. The Rwandan team huddle in a circle on their knees with Micho leading them in prayer.
Rwanda qualify for the group stage with former finalists Algeria, Mali and Benin. Eritrea’s hated rivals Ethiopia survive a scare against Somalia. They drew 0-0 in neutral Djibouti before taking the Somali team to the altitude of Addis Ababa and winning
5-0. Lesotho, Congo, Namibia, Mozambique, Equatorial Guinea, DR Congo, Tanzania, Togo and Kenya all join them in the group stage. But Eritrea will have to wait another four years for a chance to qualify for the World Cup finals. The players are all gathered on the centre circle, hands on hips. They look distraught. Coach Negash Teklit approaches each player, puts an arm around his shoulder and whispers softly into his ear. It is time to leave.
Negash will later admit at the post-match press conference that the better team won but will claim that the travel was a deciding factor. ‘We are coming here to win but to tell you frankly we are moving out Sunday. We sat fifteen hours in Khartoum, boarding at 1 a.m. and landing here at two in the afternoon. We tried to rest but finally we lose.’ He is upbeat, though. It is a young team. They will improve. There is an up and coming CECAFA Cup tournament to prepare for in a month’s time. Micho, on the other hand, is not a happy man. He is sitting in the press conference room being peppered with impertinent questions. The Rwandan journalists are not happy either; with the team selection, with the substitutions, with the fact that Rwanda only scored three goals.
‘Your personal opinion you can keep for yourself,’ he barks at a disembodied voice at the back of the room. ‘If you think that they are on the bench then come and do this job yourself. Because you are not qualified!’
‘You are a very talented guy. Give me your phone number so I can later send you on a coaching course because it looks like you know when to change and who to change!’ he shouts at another sarcastically.
‘If I rate this performance out of one to ten, I would give two. I am at all not satisfied,’ he concludes dismissively.
He storms out past the fans who have been waiting outside the gate blowing their vuvuzelas, and on to the team bus. Strangely, the New Times match report fails to mention any of this. ‘The Wasps, who are rebuilding after a disappointing 2012 Nations Cup qualifying campaign, were too good for the Red Sea Boys much to the delight of screaming fans.’ Rwanda’s victory, it seems, is an unqualified, unopposed success.
**
The next day an empty bus with an Eritrean flag glued to the window is waiting outside the Red Sea Boys’ hotel. The engine is running and coach Teklit is in a hurry. He is moving quickly, bringing bags to the bus and then disappearing back into the hotel. Eritrean officials, even the hotel manager, are standing outside, nervously looking from their watches to the hotel entrance to the bus. The players begin to emerge one by one. I count them as they enter and take their seats. All eighteen players are present and accounted for. No one will be absconding today. Kahsay Embaye is also watching the departure with his one working eye, satisfied that his work is done. We shake hands warmly. ‘Maybe one day I will see you in Eritrea,’ he offers. The bus pulls away and coach Negash waves out of the back window.
The Eritrea team returns home. I phone the airline and the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. The team boards the plane, and no one has claimed asylum. Perhaps that was to be expected. Tanzania and Kenya might well have granted asylum to close to fifty Eritrean footballers in the past. But Rwanda? ‘No Eritrean player would take the risk to defect in Kigali in a country where Kagame’s tough rule would likely send them back to Asmara,’ one former FIFA official later told me. ‘If there are defections, it will take place in transit in Nairobi.’
There were some similarities between the two presidents, Kagame and Afewerki. Both had come to power at the head of revolutionary militias. Both preached order and stability over individualism and freedom. Yes, Rwanda was a freer place, but there was something strange here, too. The outward appearance of freedom, checked internally for the common good, always fearful of what its people are truly capable off. Rwanda didn’t need Eritrea’s brutal dictatorship. Rwanda had a more nuanced form of control: self-censorship of the mind. There are no defections in transit or in Nairobi. But then a strange thing happens. The Eritrea federation pulls the national team out of the
CECAFA tournament that Negash Teklit had been so excited about. The federation claimed that it could not afford the trip, but few believe that. The CECAFA tournament is due to take place in Tanzania, where only four months earlier thirteen Eritreans from Red Sea FC claimed political asylum. The Eritrean National Cycling Federation also pulls out of the Tour of Rwanda. Eritrea has recently been crowned continental champions, too, and Eritrea’s leading cyclist, Daniel Teklehaymanot, won the Tour of Rwanda in 2010. No reason was given for the withdrawal. No one knew when, or where, the Eritrea national football team would surface again.
**
Adelaide, Australia. December 2011.
Ermias Haile lives a few blocks from the Hindmarsh Stadium in the Australian city of Adelaide, the city of churches. It is the home of A-League side Adelaide United FC, and once hosted group matches during the 2000 Summer Olympics. Ermias’s house is an unremarkable bungalow. It has a small unkempt yard in the front and larger patch of grass in the back, and is to be found down a quiet suburban cul-de-sac opposite a large supermarket. His shift at the factory only finished an hour ago, but he has already changed into his football kit. Five young men live in this house, cooking together, praying together, going out together, chatting up girls together and, when the opportunity arises, playing football together. ‘We work at a switchboard manufacturing company,’ Ermias says proudly, with the zeal of a newly arrived immigrant still marvelling at the size of his first pay cheque. ‘First we were told what to do,’ he says. ‘Now we have started to paint boards and we get to put together the boxes.’
Ermias rarely refers to himself in the singular. When he talks it is not of ‘I’, but of ‘we’ and of ‘us’. The five young Eritrean men who live here are a collective, forged together through a shared journey and a shared sacrifice. Possibly one of the biggest sacrifices any person can make: never to see your home or your family again. ‘We go everywhere together,’ he says of his housemates. ‘We are like brothers. We take care of each other.’ In 2009 Ermias left his home in Asmara to travel to Kenya. He was part of the Eritrea national team sent to the CECAFA Cup where he played as a defensive midfielder. It is a thankless position, one that involves discipline and hard work, offers few opportunities for glory or goals, but one which is essential for any team to succeed. Defensive midfielders are the water carriers, the beating heart of the team. ‘I used to play in the streets,’ he says of his early years in Asmara. ‘Then the coach saw me playing on the streets, he picked me and put me in the team. I was selected for the Under 17 Eritrea team and then from that I was getting better and better.’
Thirty-One Nil Page 9
