In Ghana, future boxing champions hit Bokum’s rings

The sun is setting over a postcard ocean, but all eyes are already on the ring. A small troop of dancers warms the audience. A few meters away, two young women are getting ready, stretched out and massaged by their coaches. In blue, Faruiza Osman, 22. In red, Priscilla Assofa Adbakudi, one year his senior, recently recruited by the army. Both have already represented Ghana in international boxing tournaments.

Their fight is intense but brief, almost friendly. The goal is not to win a KO victory but to set an example for the little girls who crowd this Saturday, March 20 around the raised platform in the middle of a busy street in Accra. “A sport reserved for men, that shouldn’t exist! “, harangues Faruiza Osman, stepping over the ropes, sweaty under her lace-edged hijab: “Everything that men do, women can do too, and often even better. We were always told that the outside world belonged to the boys and that the girls’ place was in the kitchen. But it’s over now! “

His tirade is interrupted by cheers from the audience: two barefoot girls have just entered the ring. They are not more than 7 years old and with great difficulty put on leather gloves that are too big for them. The referee comes to them quickly explain the basic rules: tighten the fists, no blows under the belt nor with the legs. But the girls already know it.

A neighborhood famous all over the world

“Boxing is in the DNA of all the inhabitants of Bokum”, explains Sarah Lotus Asare, member of the Boxing Association of Greater Accra (GABA) and co-organizer of the event. The district is famous around the world for being a factory of champions. The clubs have swarmed there by dozens in recent years. And it is not uncommon, at nightfall, to attend outdoor fights like those which oppose the frail boxers this evening.

Since the “Box! “ Launched by the referee, the young pugilist in blue sends a right hook to the red which unleashes the crowd. The punches are imprecise, the fault of the disproportionate gloves for the arms of the little girls, as thin as chopsticks. But the blows bear: the small ones compensate in aggressiveness what they lack in technique. When the ref separates them, they smile behind their mouthguards. Out of the ring, the red and the blue are good friends.

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As soon as the first female wrestlers have descended, two new featherweights climb onto the boards. All matches end without a win: you just need to be in the ring to be selected by the federation. At the end of the tournament, 24 girls and teenagers will be recruited in two sessions, one in Bokum, the other in the neighboring district of Chorkor. For GABA, it remains to convince the families to let their daughters join the association, then organize the training of apprentices.

“In Ghana, women who box are rare, deplores Sarah Lotus Asare. Of course, we have our big names: Faruiza Osman, Sarah Apew, legend Yarkor Chavez… But for the moment, the country does not have a professional boxer. “

“Fight against teenage pregnancies”

The Saturday following their first nocturnal fights, the new recruits come to register in small groups in a GABA room, under the supervision of a relative or a neighbor. All of them have schoolgirls shaved heads: the youngest is only 5 years old, the oldest just 13 years old. “I wasn’t scared at all when I got in the ring, boastful Diana Naalaale Otoo. Boxer makes me happy, I can’t wait to start class. I want to make history by becoming the first woman to bring the World Cup back to Ghana! ” Mary Nortui is more modest: at 12, she wants “Become a boxing teacher, to teach other little girls how to fight”.

Classes will first take place once a week, on Saturdays, time to identify talent. “You have to take them young if you want to hope to train future world champions, underlines the secretary general of GABA, Alex Ntiamoah-Boakye. The best people will have a coach who will train them several times a week. “

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But for others, boxing will not have been a waste of time. “We want to make them more assertive, to increase their self-confidence, professes Alex Ntiamoah-Boakye. It is also a way of fighting at our level against teenage pregnancies, so that they are able to refuse if an older man offers them sex. We want these little girls to have a future thanks to boxing. Our credo is Books before hooks [les livres avant les coups de poing]. By meeting their parents, we try to convince them to send their daughters not only in the ring, but also on their way to school. “