Allison's Peace Corps Blog: Soccer in Zapotillo

Snap shot of Zapotillo

The path from town to the community of Zapotillo

The sub-urban community of Zapotillo (Sa-poe-tEE-o) sits on the banks of the Rio Coco (the Coco River), about a 20 minute walk outside of the municipal capital where I live. It is home to hundreds of people and has a rich history of indigenous culture, mounds, and artisans. Many years ago it used to be a bustling center of activity, as shown in artifacts found throughout the community. These days, things have changed.
Even though it is so close to town, many people do not work and many kids and adolescents do not study. My friends in Zapotillo tell me that it is due to a lack of motivation and discipline. Supposedly kids don’t want to go to school, and parents don’t feel like they can force their kids to do something they don’t want to do. All the youth want to do is play, and because Zapotillo is home to a soccer field and baseball field everyone plays either soccer or baseball.

The Set-Up

Because of its location, and its soccer field, I enjoy walking out to Zapotillo and playing soccer there. When I was playing soccer back in June with girls in town I dreamed of moving the practices to Zapotillo to take advantage of the spacious soccer field there.

Then, a couple months ago I ended up on a bus sitting next to 20 year old Katherine. Over the course of the two hour ride we got talking and I found out she is studying psychology in the University on Saturdays and that she has a sister that lives south of Estelí. Just before we reached our destination I put two and two together and realized that I had already met her, during my first week visiting my site back in May last year. She is from Zapotillo, and I went to her house the first time I went to Zapotillo. In the last few minutes of the ride I told her I would get out and visit her again soon. She didn’t believe me.

Less than a week later I walked out to Zapotillo again with our mutual friend and we visited Katherine and her mother, Doña Leo, the local preschool teacher. I asked her about activities for youth in Zapotillo and Katherine told me that she had a small bible study group once weekly, but that was it. She also told me that many of the youth (ages 15-25) were organizing themselves into youth groups with the goal of organizing sports leagues and other activities. They even had support from some parents, and had defined roles for various members. "BINGO!" I thought. This is exactly what I was looking for. She invited me to the next meeting.

The following week I showed up to the meeting and proposed the idea of giving mini-classes about various sexual health topics paired with soccer practice afterwards and everyone was in. They had their group organized, but didn’t have any real activities planned out yet. So we decided to start with this.

The Project

Now I am going to Zapotillo about two to three times weekly. One day a week I work with the adolescents and young adults on a sexual health topic, and then we have soccer practice. I work with the girls on improving their skills and the guys scrimmage like they normally do. Another day a week I go just to work with the kids. We had a really large turn-out of kids that wanted to participate in the activities. It broke my heart to tell them no, even though they were too young, so now I go one day per week and dedicate the time to them. We work on a more age-appropriate health topic, and then we have co-ed soccer practice. The third day that I go, we just do arts and crafts activities. We use recycled materials, and at some point I hope to include some sort of environmental education during these visits. So far so good :)