Playing by Their Rules: coastal teenage girls in Kenya on life, love and football - Paperback

by Sarah Forde (Author)

In April 2001 a small girls' football and development programme began in Kilifi district, coastal Kenya. Eight years later there are 3,000 girls playing football, accessing reproductive health information and social support in the Moving the Goalposts (MTG) project. Playing by Their Rules tells the girls' stories as told to the author, Sarah Forde, a journalist, development practitioner and trained football coach who had been with MTG from the outset. The stories expose how girls negotiate through their complex teenage years. We hear tales of their sexual dilemmas, the onset of menses, their fear of pregnancy, the prevalence of abortion, their school and home lives and how football both enriches and complicates their lives. Most of all, though, the book is an account of the author's journey into the girls' worlds - a unique telling of stories that are shocking, heart-warming and enlightening for those of us who'd like to know more about the teenage lives of girls in East Africa.

Author Biography

Sarah Forde is a writer and feminist development practitioner based in Kenya. Through her degree at Newcastle University she became interested in development issues, particularly around gender but decided to focus on trying to earn a living through her other passion - the media - in her home country. She volunteered as a writer and broadcaster for her local newspaper and BBC radio station while holding down a string of temporary jobs - working in a laundry, distributing Yellow Pages door to door and temping in offices. She eventually became a freelance journalist in the UK, writing on women's sport for national newspapers. At the same time she was a radio journalist working for the BBC as a sports producer and presenter, covering her beloved Norwich City Football Club and other sports. She has played football since she was in primary school and became a trained coached in her mid 20s when she began to coach young girls and boys in the UK. At this time a trip to Kenya to visit a friend re-kindled her interest in gender and development in Africa and the seeds for starting a girls' football and development programme in rural Kenya were sewn. For the last eight years Sarah has worked for this project, Moving the Goalposts, managing it, fund raising, and now she has written a book about it, which centres on life stories told to her by girls within the project. Sarah's personal story also features, which includes the other reason she came to Kenya - her husband, a Kenyan who she now has two beautiful daughters with.