FOTO: Kokosy na ledě. Hokejisté z Africké Keni chtějí na olympiádu!

29. srpna 2016·Zábava·Redakce

Munori, a passionate in-line skater who plays hockey every Sunday at a park in the central business district, has just laced up his first pair of blades and stepped out onto the ice. He appears steady on his feet as his teammates Amos Ndung’u, Alex Kabwoya and Michael Munyaro—who all also got their start playing roller hockey—give him a quick demonstration of how to cut, turn and brake.

Ice flies.

“It feels awkward,” Munori says, shifting his foot to examine the blade. “Like I’m new to it.” He glances around the rink, where the rest of the players are warming up. “At least this place is not as cold as I thought.”

If you didn’t know you were fewer than 90 miles from the equator, it would be hard to tell from the inside of the Solar Ice Rink. The scrape of skates and blaring music echo off mural-covered walls where painted figures of every skin color skate, ski and toboggan against an idyllic alpine backdrop. It’s the only ice rink in East or Central Africa, and it’s where the Kenyan Ice Hockey League meets for a game every Wednesday night.

The games are informal, with a mix of local and international players. There’s no official uniform, though a handful of the guys wear custom-made jerseys emblazoned with hockey sticks crossing the distinctive shield on the Kenyan flag. By necessity, the equipment is all imported, and much of it is donated or improvised. Many players don’t wear helmets. And even the more experienced ones, who basically skated out of the womb in Slovakia or Canada, sometimes have trouble stopping because the rental skates’ blades are so worn.

But every week, at least half the players on the ice are Kenyan. And more are coming all the time.

“A lot of people, a lot of Africans, they think it’s a white man’s sport. But they come to see it, to have fun, and then they get the interest,” says Ben Azegere, a skating instructor at the rink who also happens to be one of the best players in the league.

“It’s thrilling,” he adds. “Most of the guys, they come here for the thrill.”

The rink opened in 2005 at Panari Sky Center, a gleaming hotel and shopping complex on the outskirts of town near the airport. It was a risky venture—building costs aside, it’s not cheap to keep the ice cold in a country where the only naturally occurring snow exists at the top of 17,000-foot-high Mount Kenya. But it wasn’t long before a steady stream of local schoolchildren and families started stepping onto the ice for a novel experience.

“I thought it’s just wonderful to see something like this in Kenya,” says Boniface Mukwate, who has been maintaining the ice at Solar since it opened. His old, hand-pushed ice resurfacer broke about two years ago. A new one is finally on the way, but in the meantime, he hoses the ice down and spreads the water with a squeegee.

With its sharp corners, the rink was not originally designed with hockey in mind. But the news of the Solar Ice Rink’s debut caught the attention of an American architect in Nairobi. Chicago native Andrew Gremley had been designing a lab for a team of HIV researchers from the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, and inspiration struck.

“I contacted them and said, ‘Can we organize the world’s first ice hockey game in Kenya?’” says Gremley, who still lives in Nairobi. The Canadians seized on the idea with enthusiasm, packing up their sticks and collecting donated skates to bring along on their next trip to Kenya while Gremley fashioned some makeshift goals. And in January 2006, the Kenya Ice Hockey League was born.

“It was Team Winnipeg versus the world, basically,” Gremley says with a small chuckle, remembering how the “Winnipeg Jets” defeated their challengers—an assortment of UN workers, one Swede, a handful of Canucks from other provinces and a few curious Kenyans—with a final score of 4-3.

Aga Khan Walk is a sunken parking lot right in the center of Nairobi, just a stone’s throw from the Kenyatta International Convention Centre building that dominates the city’s skyline.

It’s a sunny Sunday in late May and the place is packed as Nairobi’s residents celebrate the end of the rainy season. Teenagers flirt, enterprising vendors hawk peanuts, and a couple of laughing parents skate slowly on either side of their small, wobbly daughter, who is still in her best fairy princess Sunday dress.

In one corner of the park, Joseph Thuo sets down his stick and cracks a grin, showcasing half a missing tooth. “This is why I wasn’t at ice hockey last week,” he says, indicating the lopsided smile with his customary swagger. “A stick just went up and, ooh.”

Almost every Sunday afternoon that isn’t rainy, Joseph and teammates Michael, Amos, and Javis (last seen going over the difference between braking on wheels and on blades) can be found here along with the rest of the team, playing hockey until the light goes and they can barely see the ball.

For years, Kenya Ice Hockey League organizer Bruce Strachan (an American with a “Canadian hockey-rich heritage” on his dad’s side) found that recruitment of local ice hockey players was slow, in large part because of the cost of entry at the rink. It’s about 800 shillings, or $8.00, which on a weekly basis is prohibitive for many young Kenyans.

But when the first in-line skater crossed over to try ice hockey a couple of years ago, some of his teammates expressed interest in checking it out. Last year, the rink’s Panari management agreed to sponsor three local players per league night, and the roller hockey guys started taking turns hitting the ice.

They’ve taken to it quickly, and the games are fast-paced and fun to watch. But unless the ice hockey league gets more funding that would allow all the players to play at once — and for longer — street hockey will likely remain the priority.

Lack of funding has been the Kenya Ice Hockey League’s biggest and most constant obstacle to raising its profile. In July of this year, the Royal Moroccan Ice Hockey Federation will host the first African Ice Hockey Cup in Rabat. Kenya was invited but couldn’t put together the money to attend.

“We have a bright future,” says Ben Azegere, the skating instructor, who along with his fellow teacher Alex Kabwoya often gives lessons to local school groups. “For us guys, we started a bit late, but we see a bright future for the kids. They have the facilities.”

Kabwoya agrees, noting that some of his students have ambitions of playing at a higher level. “I have small kids I’m teaching here who are good, really good,” he says.

Azegere’s wife Dinah, however, doesn’t see why Kenyan ice hockey should wait around for the next generation.

An occasional player herself, she stopped in for skating lessons a couple of years ago — “I was stressed out at work and I always wanted to be a figure skater,” she says — and Ben was her instructor. They married in November.

“We actually fell in love on this rink,” she says.

Dinah is currently building a website called MySkatingLife.com aimed at getting more Kenyans interested in hockey. In the short term, her plan is to bring spectators in to watch the Wednesday night games. The idea is to arrange buses to transport university students to the rink, where there will be hot drinks and snacks for sale, dance groups to hype up the crowd and a floor manager to coordinate cheers. Admission will be 200 shillings ($2.00) each, and the proceeds will go toward sponsoring more players and importing much-needed new equipment.

“Sometimes I look at the kids’ boots and I think, ‘How will we get to the Olympics?’” she says, shaking her head.

Which brings us to Dinah’s long-term plans.

She’s done her research. The Solar Ice Rink is too small to meet international standards, so Kenya would be ineligible to host any Olympic qualifying events. She dreams of taking a group of talented, young Kenyan ice hockey players to watch the games in South Korea in 2018 to get inspired—giving them four years to convince the Kenyan government to build an international-standard rink and put together a team for Beijing in 2022.

“Plenty of time,” she says with a laugh.

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