There are three things in life you can’t tell your parents, especially if they’re african. One, you can’t tell them which girls (or guys) you’re seeing, as they are nosier than any friend, foe, or botched rhinoplasty. Two, you can’t tell them about your side hustles, they’ll make you pay for more and act like you have the money even if you make 1000 shillings an hour. Three, your ambitions. Especially if they are not being a doctor, lawyer, or engineer? Forget it. Don’t forget your ambition, just forget the informing part: lie a little, and pursue it on the low. Unless you blow up and become a global sensation like I did.
The thing that you love to do that comes easiest and naturally in childhood is the thing you should probably consider doing until the day you die. Quite a strong statement, but I think it’s the most true, simplistic, effective advice that my Grandpa has ever given me. Babu Kihengu never spoke much, but when he did, his inner teacher came out and schooled me greatly on what it means to live this life. And in this lifetime of mine, there is nothing I love to do more than to play the most beautiful game in life, football.
“ICARUS!” my mom calls me downstairs. I put on my blazer and khaki shorts on, and rush to head downstairs. “Ndiyo mama?” I said, which is swahili but I think you can universally all tell when someone says “YES MOM?” but I stated it merely in lowercase to not offend her. “How are you? How come you’ve been in your room for so long this entire morning? Get ready to go to the store with me.” she says. “Do I have to go to the soko?? (store in swahili)” I whine. “You, don’t say such bullcrap. You go to soccer practice all day and you act like you’re too tired to wake up early in the morning. Stop being stupid.” My dad emerges from his office. Being 12 years old, I didn’t think much of what I would respond with, and I said “Yeah I’m very tired I want to be able to rest Baba. What’s wrong with that?” SLAP. A wincing pain begins to settle on my cheekbones. “Stop with this fucking bullshit of acting like this from playing outside. If you focused on what you want to be your career instead of this soccer bullshit maybe you’d have energy to go with your mother.”
Tears were slipping from my eyes, but nothing phased my stepfather. “Leave with your child he needs more discipline, look at him crying like a girl.” he mocks. My mother pinches an iron grip on my wrist, clearly disdaining more anger for me than anything, and tells me “Stop talking, let's go to the market.” My mother’s car is parked outside, a white Lexus SUV that’s quite nice for the area of Dar es Salaam that we’re in, which is Segerea. Although she wouldn’t be able to afford it had it not been for stepfather paying the house bills. I was still slightly crying, and in my pain from how I was treated, I said to my mom, “He’s so mean, why would he do this to me?” choking up tears in the way I talk. She gives me a look that’s slightly blank but with bare sympathy, saying “Saint Icarus, you should have respected him. Don’t talk back”. And with my puffy red eyes and slightly wet blazer from drying my tears, we were off to Kigamboni to the market.
So I guess I don’t have the best relationship with my family. And to the average reader perhaps you can quickly pick up that my stepfather might be the root of all evil in my life that my mother won’t address for the life of me. But, even in the face of family, even when they tried to yell at me, slap me, condition me as if I am a mere animal, there is no one else in this lifetime that I can be other than me. So when I received the letter in the mail at the post office that changed my life, I took it and ran with it. So far that my parents didn’t know what I was doing until years later.
What letter? You might be wondering. See, in Tanzania, Young Africans Sports Club, also known as Yanga S.C. is one of the best in the world. There used to be a time where every African footballer wanted to move to Europe and such, to make money and play in a place where their talents are more recognized, honorable, and paid. But now, we live in a time where such dynamics are changing. After the tariff trade war started by the United States, there’s been a bit of global dysfunction that has primarily really affected western countries' resources and infrastructure. Quite frankly, a lot of the wealth they had has dissipated in wrongful legislation and attempts to fix the impending problems caused by their own failed leadership, and thus has been a big crutch to cultural soft powers and forms of entertainment like the league. There is still oil money, but this gap in western power in the global south has given more room for countries like Tanzania to breathe and invest more into itself while countries like the US and its allies like the UK are in distress.
Politics aside, within the past decade alone, African infrastructure for sports has improved drastically since the AFCON of 2024 really put us on the globe, and it has gotten to a point to where people often argue if the CAF Champions League is comparable or even on par with Spain’s La Liga and England’s Premier League. I’ll let you take a guess on that. But with all this in mind, I was shocked to read the words that appeared on the very letter in my hands that evening after going to the market.
In my room of course. AND I hid the letter quite frankly after reading it, hoping that my parents would never find out, but oh wouldn’t they. In the letter, it addressed me as such: “Dear Saint Icarus, It is of pleasure to.” Oh did I mention it’s in Swahili, the english translations are just for your American convenience. Anyways, onwards. My eyes welled up at the words I was seeing, stating “It is of pleasure to invite you to the Yanga S.C. Academy, where it is our honor to cover your training expenses and travel fees to allow you an opportunity to be one of the best here in TZ.”
Rule number three guys. Rule number three. But regardless I jumped up and down on my bed in excitement, squealing into my pillow. It had been my lifelong dream to be a footballer, not just any footballer, but one of the greats, like the ones who give me the most hope, such as Neymar, Drogba, and Pele. And now in an era where football for Africa is changing for the better, there is nothing I wanted more than to start achieving my goal at Tanzania’s similar academy of Barcelona’s La Masia, called Nyumba ya Simba. Which literally translates to the House of lions.
I’m 18 now. On my 17th birthday, Yanga S.C officially offered me a position to be their leading forward on the team. I would be one of the youngest forwards in the world, probably after Lamine Yamal or such in the day. But it felt surreal to be able to join the greatest football club in the world to me, here in the heart of home of Dar es Salaam. But playing the first season was one of the greatest opportunities of a lifetime to play.
The world has opened up to African football clubs, and now there is a GCL, the Global Champions League, taking the best of 4 teams from the continents of the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Africa, to compete for the Global Champions League title and cup. Yanga S.C is one of the four qualifying African clubs to play for the GCL, and in my first season, we had made it to the quarter finals just before being beaten by Liverpool, a talented team. But that was when my parents first saw how much I truly cared about the game, making my mother proud, but then angering my stepfather, and then making my mother upset at me.
You would think that if you are making history as one of the first Tanzanians and one of the youngest players in the world to accomplish such great things (and did I mention I’m making a hell of a lot of Tanzanian Shillings off of this?) that your parents would be proud and brag to Whatsapp right? You know, “Oh my son plays for Yanga SC as the forward and he took them to the quarter finals on a shootout against Liverpool last season, he’s not only employed amidst a global recession he’s making lots of money and a legacy for himself too.” Not to hype myself up with that last part but I really am doing a lot.
But the resentment in which I faced after achieving all that was probably if not worse than before I had even begun to dream of achieving it at 12. My parents always wanted me to go to university because they thought that getting a high-paying white collar job would be the best thing for me to achieve and that was the only redeeming quality that they, no, my stepfather would willingly attribute to me. “Go work hard on your GCSE’s so you can go to an engineering school in London on full scholarship.” He would often tell me. “The job market is not that great these days for my generation and neither is the debt and stabbings I think.” I honestly replied back one day, and he sighed before saying, “When you fail in this dunia, do not come crawling back to me because I told you so right then and here.”
If you can’t tell, I did not go to London. Instead, I went to the Yanga S.C. academy at 12. Well, they found out eventually after a month of me going because I accidentally dropped a flyer to a game on our porch. To say my stepfather was disappointed was the least, but my mother surprisingly was willing to take me to practice in secret on the weekends, and on the weekdays I would depend on the darajas and city bus drivers in Dar. That is how I lived my teen years, pursuing in secret what I loved because the world, no, my family, or rather, my stepfather wouldn’t allow me to be as I am.
“GOALLLLLLLLLLLL!!!” The crowd roars in thunderous cheers as we score a goal against Liverpool, finally beating them this GCL semi-final season, and qualifying for the final match on Friday against F.C. Barcelona. There was a time that I wanted to go to Barcelona and play for them, especially when I was younger, as that was the team both Neymar and Messi played for. We often want to go to the west and leave everything behind in pursuit of better opportunities that bloom as a result of stolen seeds from where you come from. To be able to be a footballer in an era where the resources and infrastructure is coming back to the source is truly a blessing, as I get to speak my native language on the team, represent my beautiful country of Tanzania, and play alongside my native brothers.
But that also means dealing with native people. Tanzanian youths are really socially forward when it comes to a lot of things. Like most African countries, it's the elder generation that stifles growth. Even amongst a reinvestment into the public in recent years, there are still cultural and social stigmas that we still have to break that would be easier had I been in Spain or a country like England playing for the Premier League. But I guess problems like racism and such could arise.
When I debuted for the Yanga team, I wanted to celebrate by giving myself a signature look. I loved when Neymar went blonde, it was one of the coolest things I had ever seen a human being do. So when I decided to put my hairline to the test and went blonde at the ripe age of 17? Jamani (swahili for bro), may god have protected my instagram comments. The way I was being slandered left and right for my hairstyle was insane. First, it was people my age saying either I looked extremely cool or extremely out of my mind, to which, looking back I can take it as a compliment as I am an insane player on the pitch, everyone knows that and that is why I’m still very much relevant here. But then it was spreading onto Whatsapp group messages, with older people insinuating that I was associating myself with the illuminati or I was embracing satanism and influencing children to appear in his image by bleaching their hair blonde.
To which I say, that rhetoric is actually insane and the worst part was when my parents began using it against me too. Traditionalism stands too strong in my family and is one of the main reasons why to this day, I believe, that my mother still won’t divorce my stepfather. But not even a day after my new hairstyle breaks national Tanzanian and African news, my stepfather video calls me. This is the first time he had ever done this in my life. “Shkamo Baba,” I greet him with a monotone voice, as when he calls me there is never anything good to come out of it. “Hey Saint Icarus, what the hell is it that you’ve done with your hair? I mean come on, are you a girl? Why is your hair blonde? I’m getting messages left and right from people talking about you, do you know how this affects our family? I told you not to pursue that football stuff, now you come and embarrass us with your haircut? Do you know what people are going to say about me as a father” he yells for what feels like forever.
“It’s my hair, it’s not that serious for you to care,” I responded back. I hear the phone being passed with him mumbling “Hey lady, tell your son to get his act together if he can’t handle being famous.” “Hello?” I say. “Hello, yeah Icarus, you should really listen to what your father says,” my mom says on the phone with a blank expression that I can’t read. “Okay..” I responded.
That was the most aggravating call I had, because why would you add fuel to the fire when I’m already being harassed about it? And it looks good?? But now there is an almost ulcer-like feeling in my gut, a pain from the stress of it all, and I hope to wake tomorrow Friday morning and end the night with a final win, cementing my legacy and the legacy of Tanzania in football history despite what opinions and people might get in the way.
So the three things you can’t tell my parents in this life? One, you can’t tell them that you want to present yourself in the way you want, as they are judgier than any foe, commentator, or tweet. Two, you can’t tell them about your wins, they’ll make you pay for more mentally and act like you are too busy for their ideas. Three, never ever mention your ambitions. Especially if they are not being a cookie cutter version of what your parents project you to be in this life? Forget it. But no matter how hard I try, I could never forget my ambition, nor was I really able to lie on the low. I’m a legacy in the making in my home country where my ancestors lived and died, and abroad on the global scale as they watch me alongside Yanga take Tanzanian football to heights never reached in history, but at a cost so vulnerable I hope the self satisfaction fills the gaping hole in my heart.