Kabul – An Afghan Style Swimming Contest

The first time I see such a bizarre swimming contest, where many of the participants escape from the swimming pool in the middle of the race.

The previous swimming exhibition 3 days ago brought me back to the crowded swimming pool of Youth Club (Klab-e-Jawanan). As before, they also made early announcement time for reporters to come. The original schedule for the competition was to be held at 9 in the morning, but not until 3 p.m. the swimming contest was started.

The program organizer, a man in his 30’s and a body completely wrapped by stack hairs, requested the half-naked young boys to sit nicely in the provided benches. He, just like his swimming students, also dressed minimally. First time I saw an event organizer dressing only in singlet and pants, not even a swim pack. “OK, boys. Go back to your seat, we will start our program!” said him with the microphone. After noticing me taking photos of him only in white pants and talking on MC desk, he immediately grabbed jeans trousers to cover his hairy legs.

The competition started, finally. There are only 4 lanes in this tiny pool, which means only 4 swimmers will contest in one shift. Some different provinces joined the contest, from Kandahar, Kabul, to Jalalabad. The contestants are young, about 15 years old and less.

As they are young athletes, the contests were only in 50 m of distance, except one category for 100-m freestyle. First, 4 contestants for 50-m freestyle, then continued by another shift for the same category.

Muhammad Kabir, a young swimming trainer today had a duty as a referee to give instruction for jump start. “Take your mark….,” and two finalists jumped into the water. All audiences laughed. “No, not yet. You should wait until I say ‘Go!’”. OK, the two finalists went back to their start board. Kabir counted again, “Take your mark…,” …, and one of the early starters jumped to water again. The boys at the pool side laughed again.
“OK…, OK, …. You should change ‘take your mark…’ to be ‘yak, do, se (one, two, three)’ because some guys here don’t understand those English words.”
“yak…, do….,” Kabir repeated his command in Dari, but before ’se’ all contestants already jumped to water.
It was indeed easier to use whistle instead.

Some of the boys also swam with boggy trousers. Of course the trousers turned to be a gas balloon in water, and it will make their swimming much heavier. But this didn’t stop of the young boys. Swim… swim… swim….

Interestingly, among the contestants you also see Kabir, the trainer-cum-referee. He also competed in some categories, and he competed with his own students. When he had to jump to water, he asked one of his students to replace him to give start command. Of course, as the opponents are all his students, he also became the winner for all categories. So, I saw Kabir with many predicates: trainer, referee, contestant, and also the one standing highest to receive medals.

This is also the first swimming contest where I see so many contestants leave the arena before finishing their race. A boy just jumped to water, swam for 10 meters, and jumped out from the pool side and walked to ask mineral water from his supporters. He didn’t jump back to the water though, as he completely gave up the race. One other swimmer, in different race but using the same lane, also did the same after doing 25 meters of distance. The lane was lane no. 4, which the referee called as ‘escape lane’, because many athletes from that lane escaped the race.

It was very embarrassing to see how easily the contestants give up the short race, just because they thought they could not finish it. Isn’t it the sportive spirit to struggle until the end? But this was not the spirit of many of young contestants here. On contrast, one disabled contestant from Kabul with improper legs probably due to polio, finished 50-m backstroke race, even if only got the fourth place. I was really impressed by his strong spirit despite of being disabled.

There were important guests attending the contest. One was a South Korean taekwondo trainer, maybe in his last days in the country following the South Korean government agreement in Taliban to call all Koreans home from Afghanistan. The other man was a disabled athlete. The club owner gave much respect to these two guests, as well as some other guests.

But for children, watching swimming contest was quite boring. Some boys were fighting to get free soft drink provided by the swimming club owner, and of course this strong handed owner slapped any kids who are cheating. When the special guests asked to leave before the contest finished, the boys who couldn’t stand anymore sitting and watching, attempted to jump to water. But watch out, the angry club owner came and slap the naughty kids. It was very exaggerating to see his way grabbed those tiny poor boys, slap them one by one, and drag them out by throwing them to an exit door next to me. If little boys at this young ages are used to violent attitude from elders, you can expect what they will be when they grow up.

But anyway, this swimming pool is an attractive place for me. At least now I know where to spend hot summer days in Kabul.