Destination: South Africa

Nigeria happens to have one of the best homeless street soccer sides in the world - they finished fourth last year at the World Cup in Milan. So, I decided to check them out.

It's not common to have women and men playing side-by-side in Nigeria. Like in most countries, boys and girls are segregated at a young age. But here, the young women were holding their own, with some really sick juggling moves - one I was particularly fond of involved trapping the ball on the back of your neck, taking off your shirt (they wore layers) and putting it back on, without dropping the ball. Seriously difficult in a sticky, sweaty soccer jersey.

Check out my photo essay of Suliat.  

Suliat first started training with the group around four years ago, when a local non-governmental organization launched a football program in the Ajegunle slum where she grew up. But she never really took it seriously:

"I thought they were just people trying collect money from us," she said. That is, until the house she shared with her 19 family members was demolished as part of a road expansion.  Her family was scattered, living with various friends and relatives for months.

I walked with Suliat to the spot where here house once stood. There was nothing there but garbage mixed with muddy earth. A child was picking through the rubbish for anything salvageable. A few metres away trucks and tractors were dumping and flattening out sand for the new road.

"I lost a lot of things," Suliat told me, a pained expression on her face. "I lost friends, I lost happy-iom, you know?"

Things are definitely better for her now. A number of well-wishers, including the local NGO, helped Suliat's family build another house. But beyond everything, it's football that has given her the strength to get through it all.

"When I'm with the ball, I feel happy, I feel comfortable, I feel relaxed," she said. "I don't downgrade myself. I remove that phobia in myself - I get it out of me."

I can see what she means. Around the corner from her house, she picked up a ball and started juggling. Within a couple minutes, dozens of people (vendors with baskets on their heads, women with babies on their hips, businessmen clutching briefcases) gathered on the street, hollering and clapping every time she pulled a trick, each one, more extravagant than the last. Neck stall. Shirt off. Shirt on. Neck stall with push-ups. I joined in and she literally juggled circles around me, three circles to be exact.

 "Since I was six, I always knew how to handle the ball," she explained. "Now I'm benefiting from it - not physical cash yet but I know football is my source of income, my pay to be."

When you speak to young female players here, they all believe they will make the national team and a get a professional contract in Europe. They believe they will make their name in soccer. It may be true that Nigeria is one of the few countries on the continent where women have a fighting chance of making a career out of soccer. Nigeria's women's side, the Super Falcons, are the top on the continent - they have won almost every single Africa Women's Championship.

I visited a training session of the Falcon's U-17 preparation program in the town of Abeokuta, about an hour outside Lagos. They had been in and out of training camp, and essentially out of school, since January, in preparation for qualification matches for the U-17 World Cup. The girls were serious, with big dreams and big personalities. They had had hopes of nothing less than becoming the next Jay-Jay Okocha, a former-Nigerian fan favourite.

But sports businessman Godwin Dudu-Orumen tells me this isn't so much because of what the Nigerian women's side is doing well, but that many other African countries are doing poorly. Nigeria struggles as soon as the competition leaves the continent. So although the Super Falcons have qualified for every FIFA Women's World Cup since 1991, they've only once made it to the quarter-finals.

Back to School

Seeing how tough a career in soccer is for Nigerian women, I worry that they are taken out of school for weeks and months at a time.

I think Suliat has the right approach. She loves the way football makes her feel, but she's keen on making school a priority as well.

"You know football can die tomorrow," she told me. "So I'm also going for my career - as in my profession, I want to be a lawyer."

She's smart and it she lets it show, all due to the confidence she has gained with the ball. "I think football has been everything to me," she told me. "Because it's not easy for a [high school] girl to stand up and come out now this is what she wants to do for a living."

Later I was led to the principal's office, where Mr. G.A Osei explained that Suliat is a shoe-in to be next years' sports prefect. "Although it's supposed to be a democratic process," he said, "whether she is voted in or not, she will be our next sports prefect."

I don't think Suliat will have any trouble getting the popular vote. As we were leaving the school, masses of young girls and boys in blue chequered uniforms ran out of their classrooms, calling out Suliat's name. They were only subdued by a frightening looking teacher swatting at them with a large heavyweight ruler.

Suliat says she wants to make her name in football. The thing is she already has.

Next up: Another epic journey from Lagos, Nigeria to Douala, Cameroon: planes, busses, taxis, and a boat ride through the Niger Delta thrown in for good measure.

You can now check out the video of my adventures in Ivory Coast on youtube including my fabulous face-plant on the bridge leading to Abidjan and my profile of the captain of the Ivory Coast's local football side Ali Badra Sangare.

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