This is how we line up to face Gor Mahia this afternoon.
▪️Alvo makes his starting debut and flies out wide on the right
▪️Joof and Ian lead the line
▪️Rambo captains the Brewers.
#KenyaMilele#GameNiYetu
In 1956, the Ugandan National football team, Cranes, toured Britain to play local teams. Against their wishes, the team was forced to wear boots in the opening game, losing 10-1 to Wycombe Wanderers. They refused to wear boots again, playing the rest in their default barefoot.
Yet that's not the most interesting bit.
At the end of the tour, several members of the squad went missing including a referee & member of the bench. One of those men was a player by the name, Jekeri p'Bitek, a consummate footballer, the inspiration behind my name, & the prolific writer we know today as Okot p'Bitek. He had escaped to the city of Bristol, applied for a diploma in Education at Bristol University, and secured admission.
He later pursued law degree, commenced barrister training but quit halfway to study cultural anthropology. That man would later give us what I consider to be the best African literary production of all time in "Song of Lawino".
Okot returned to Uganda in 1964, lecturing in Makerere University before transitioning to many other universities across East Africa, including The University of Nairobi, where many will recall the iconic Jaguar he drove.
It is my hope that these "escapees" will use their time in Britain productively as Okot did, and thus afford us a myriad of wonders from their sojourn in the land of the English men.
And women.