My story by Samuel Jalloh

I was born in Sierra Leone on the 10th February 1982, in the capital city of Freetown. My parents had eleven children and I was the eighth child born to them. At the age six, my parents gave me to a family as an orphan due to extreme poverty. By 1989 my parents separated after decades of marriage life together. My mum moved to live with her new partner in a place called Hill Station, about two miles away from where I was born.

Both my parents had never been to school or received any educational qualifications. Their only source of income was hard labour in the jungle where they cut wood and produced charcoal to sell in the local market.

In October 1989, after a year with my adopted family, I came to visit my mum in Hill Station where she was living with her partner. They both lived in a tiny, one bedroom flat just about ten yards away from the Hill Station Lawn Tennis Club, which was built around 1904.

Tennis was always a very strange game to me because I thought it was only played by rich people and white people. I remember walking past the tennis club every time my mum took me to the jungle and the club was always filled with white people running and hitting tennis balls.

One day I went across to one of the three courts and there were a few boys playing bare-hand tennis, a very popular game in Sierra Leone, and board bat tennis, with pieces of board carved like a table tennis bat. I was amazed by these kids having great fun on the tennis court, smiling and playing games. I sat down for a very long time watching these kids hitting and chasing tennis balls around on bare foot. I remember that day I made a friend called Alimamy who began teaching me how to play board bat tennis, which was the first time I set foot on a tennis court to play. From that day I fell in love with tennis.

The last game was played after 6.00 pm and I was so happy been part of the ball boy team with my new friend Alimamy. After the members left the club Alimamy gave me some money which the members has given for the ball boys, which was a surprise to me because I wasn’t doing it because of the money. My mum finally arrived around 7.00 pm, and I knew I was in trouble because I was supposed to be back to my adopted family by 6.00 pm, and they would punish me for coming home late. By the time I got back home to my adopted family it was really late at night and I was punished but I didn’t regret any of it.

A few weeks after I visited my mum, my dad and elder brother sadly passed away. Me and my entire family attended the funeral ceremony. This time my adopted family gave me a strict warning that I should be home for 6.00 pm before it start getting dark. In my mind I didn’t want to go back to them, so after the funeral I decided to stay with my cousins, the plan worked well for me as I never went back to my adopted family.

They did come to look for me but my late uncle’s wife didn’t let them take me back because I told her that didnt't want to live with them. A week later I ended up in Hill Station with my mum. Since November 1989, I had finally found a home, a new life and friends that help brought happiness into my life.

I met my good friend Alimamy again and at weekends we played board bat throughout the day and picked balls for members in the evening. I quickly excelled in board bat and bare hand tennis. In few months I became the board bat champion in the club.

One evening a Lebanese man came to play tennis and when he arrived he saw me and Alimamy playing a five set, super tie-break board bat match. He stood there watching us for almost an hour thinking maybe these kids needed some rackets. After the match, which I won, he came up to me and said “If you had a racket, you would be a junior champion.” That was great to hear but in my mind I still thought tennis was only for rich and white people. It was hard to get a racket to play with but, with board bat as the only option, we still managed to develop almost every skill in the game. We could serve and volley with board bat and rally more than twenty shots over the net from the baseline.

On 15th September 1993, one of my uncles, who was in the army as a mine detector, was ambushed and killed by the RUF rebels. I went to his funeral and stayed with the rest of the family for weeks. One day, my late uncle’s wife asked me to help clean the house, as I was cleaning their bedroom I noticed a wooden Wilson racket in good condition under their bed, I could hardly believe my eyes. I hid the racket so that no one else would see it and then took it to my mum’s flat in Hill Station and kept it under her bed.

When I returned back to my mum’s, I finally began playing tennis seriously. Thanks to that wooden racket I was able to improve my techniques for over two years, until finally the strings on the racket broke and I couldn’t get it repaired.  I practiced tennis seven days a week and became a full time ball boy at the club. In 1994, I played my first ever junior national tournament and reached the semi-finals beating the number two seed along the way.

The national coach David Morsay was impressed by my performance and a few days later he asks me to join the national team training at the National Stadium. From then tennis became my life and my dream of becoming a tennis champion for my country was alive. The lesson I’d learnt was that that even though I was not rich or white, I could play tennis and that was amazing for me.

In 1997, I qualified to represent Sierra Leone in Ghana, Togo, Benin and Nigeria in the ITF Junior Championships. My journey became a reality and the experience of playing for my country was dream come true. Sadly on the 14th February 1998 (Valentines Day) my friend Alimamy was gunned down during a cross fire between the army and rebel joint force fighting against the West African Peace Keeping Force (ECOMOG), just by the side of the very tennis court that we had all played, ate and grown up like a family. He was 15 years old. He will never be forgotten as one of Sierra Leone best junior tennis players.

On the 6th January 1999, I was in Togo playing in the ITF Junior Championship when the RUF Rebels launch an attack in the city Freetown called Operation No Living Thing. The attack was so horrific that they killed over 10,000 people in a week and left tens of thousands more homeless.

The city was totally destroyed. After we ended the junior tour of Nigeria we flew back to Ghana to seek refuge at the sports college in Winneba. There were no flights into Sierra Leone and no way to contact family members. After eight weeks in Ghana we move to the republic of Guinea for a week before catching a small domestic flight to Sierra Leone. From the airport in Freetown we were transported by helicopter through the city in which most of the government buildings were still on fire. When we arrived the whole city was like a ghost town where the shock of atrocity was still hurting people. I lost some close friends from school but my family were ok.

Four weeks after being back home I got a scholarship to go to Ghana and continue my education and tennis and so I left Freetown in May 1999.  By 2004, I had travelled half of Africa competing in ITF tournaments. In 2007, I played my last and final tournament for my country at the ninth All African Games held in Algeria.

I am so proud that I got the opportunity to play tennis, but most of all represent my country, and travel across the world meeting good people and sharing my experiences with them. Tennis had been forgotten about in the country and children are out of activities that should be teaching them how to become a good sport  and role model.

My wish is to bring back that happiness to the children of Africa through tennis. This is what gives me the drive every day.