NAIROBI – In the year 2000, a football team was founded in a slum of Nairobi plagued by crime. The football team would later be named Kariobangi Sharks, Kariobangi being the name of the informal settlement the team members hailed from.
The team became a source of hope, an escape for talented youth with an interest in football, some who might otherwise be involved in criminal activities. In the last two decades, the team has risen to the top of Kenya’s football league, nurturing talent and giving hope to a new generation of players.
When Eric Juma was 11 years old, he spotted a group of young boys training at a football pitch near his house in one of Nairobi’s many poor informal settlements: Kariobangi.
This particular team stood out for Juma because it seemed organized.
He would join the team soon after.
Juma was then 11 years old. Now he’s 25 and captain of the team.
“Football has really helped me as an individual,” Juma said. “First it kept me busy. We never had enough money for my further education, so I had to join football. Football has made me who I am today because it kept me busy and maybe I stayed away from other things that I could have done like other people in Kariobangi that ended up maybe in jail or dying.”
Right side of the law
Kariobangi is plagued by unemployment and crime, and Juma said many of his childhood friends ended up in gangs. Most of those friends, he said, are now dead, killed by police.
The Sharks kept Juma on the right side the law, but being a team from a poor settlement brought its own challenges, he said.
“We never had money way back. We used to go to Mombasa, Kisumu all those times. We didn’t even have enough money to buy mineral water, so we used to carry water from Nairobi to Mombasa,” Juma said. “Those are some of the challenges we faced as a team and as a player individually, sometimes you don’t have football shoes, you have to borrow from another player when they are not playing.”
In 2019, Juma had one of his greatest days, as the Sharks defeated British football team Everton, winning the game 4-3 on post-match penalties.
It is not clear who organized the young boys who founded the Kariobangi Sharks.
Residents says the group of young players organized themselves, then received donations and began competing in tournaments. Read More
