Grassroots Soccer

Excellent slideshow by photographer Jessica Hilltout on the grassroots soccer played throughout Africa on makeshift fields with soccer balls fashioned of rubber bands, stockings, and paper, and string.

Here's some amusing trivia from the accompanying article on Hilltrout's work.

The most oddly soulful of Ms. Hilltout’s images are of objects: the homemade balls fashioned by children from plastic bags, old socks and rags, tied up with string or strips of tree bark. Some children inflated condoms — commonplace and free on a continent beset by AIDS — wrapped them in cloth to make them heavy, then in plastic bags to seal them and finally bound them in twine. These ingenious, improvised balls bounce like real ones for a few days before the air escapes.

Hurray for Africa's ingenuity!