Jimal

It took me three months to figure out they were saying "Gym Hall." I kept hearing Jimal ("jee-mall") and figured that was simply the name the students had bestowed upon their sacred plot of dirt and dust that is their futbol pitch. Bull's Gym and Indoor Sports Hall owns a patchwork of land beyond the actual "Gym Hall" building and on Saturday mornings it draws all the local footballers out of the labyrinth of alleys and roads of Chakrapath. School children make their way to the pitch with hopes they can enter a game or two, but usually remain content socializing on the sidelines and watching the lucky players who get to taste dust and glory. Stephens students almost always get to play, as they show up with intimidating numbers of up to fourteen 8-13 year olds.

In Kathmandu, if you don't build it, they will come

Kathmandu-ers will play football anywhere. I've seen a small-sided game played a spit away from Ring Road on a 10-foot by 20-foot trash patch, with the heaps of garbage raked away to make stinky sidelines. Since the Maoists scared everyone from their home villages into the city, it's hard to find an area without development or that hasn't been ruined by the rubble of unrealized development. Even on the edges of Jimal, a brick building has been rising out of the ground for the past 4 months, encroaching on our revered dirt. Hopefully no one else sees the area as a future retail center, or the Saturday morning footballers will have to play on the garbage heap.

The older guys, who often play for money, get senior privileges, but they give the throngs of school children fair time to show off their moves. Here's Pasang showing off his moves:

I have a lot more to say about the pick-up football I have been a part of at Jimal, but it will have to wait. I am in charge of a showing of Aladdin on the projector in the computer room. The boarders (who can recite the definition of patience, but no more than that) are getting anxious to stop studying and start laughing at the genie and being physically uncomfortable every time the protagonists kiss. To be continued...