The power of soccer knows no bounds. No other sport, not baseball or cricket or basketball, can come close to soccer’s global popularity. In just about every corner of the world—from East African nations like Tanzania and Kenya to the American metropolises of Chicago and New York City—soccer brings people together like glue: Its spirit affixes itself to one’s heart and soul, providing individuals with a sense of place and pride and community regardless of where they may be residing, at home or away or somewhere in between.
World Cup matches are well underway, and five recent immigrants to the U.S. — Tolu Odeba, Mohamed Abdulla, Frank Ebere, Olivier Marambo, and Hassani Papin — will all be cheering on their home teams. But they won’t be doing it alone. They say soccer has helped them feel more at home in this country as they bond with each other and find their place in the community.
“We talk all the time about soccer, says Abdulla, mentioning a few of their favorite teams. “I’m a fan of Arsenal. They are fans of Chelsea and Manchester United. Sometimes it gets competitive.”
One other thing that brings they together: They’re all employees at WeWork, hired through the company’s Refugee Initiative. They are among the more than 150 recent immigrants who are working at various locations in the U.S., the UK, and Latin America.
Cheering for their team
Tolu Odeba, on the cleaning staff at WeWork 85 Broad St in New York City, dreamed of becoming a professional soccer player while growing up in Ibadan, Nigeria, about 80 miles northwest of the former capital city of Lagos. Prior to arriving in New York, Odeba, 39, worked as a driver in Lagos before tragedy struck his family—a series of events so raw and painful that he prefers not to discuss it—prompting him to reclaim his life across the Atlantic.
Odeba arrived at JFK International Airport last summer after a journey that brought him from a clandestine location in Nigeria to neighboring Benin, then to Turkey, and finally to the U.S., where he was immediately detained by the government. After six “horrible” months in a detention center in Elizabeth, New Jersey, a judge granted him asylum. The Church World Service helped him get settled by preparing his resume and connecting him with WeWork.
Long odds won’t stop Odeba from rooting for the Nigerian national team during the World Cup—he may watch the Russia-based matches with his Nigerian roommates—although he may feel torn when his team faces off against Argentina on June 26. “Lionel Messi,” he says with assurance, “is my favorite player.”
Frank Ebere also comes from Nigeria, which he praises for its diversity, “just like New York.” A former small business owner in Lagos who worked as the middleman between aluminum importers and contractors, Ebere decided to come to America—via Qatar—because he “wanted a new career path.”
To get settled in New York, Ebere was helped by the Seafarers International House, a Lutheran humanitarian organization, as well as the International Rescue Committee, WeWork’s primary partner in its effort to hire 1,500 refugees over the next five years.
After arriving in the country last year, Ebere began working for WeWork in January. As a part of the community services team, Ebere says that he’s able to apply the skills he utilized in Nigeria—“you deal with people every day”—to his work at WeWork 175 Varick. “When WeWork members need someone to talk to outside the normal work environment, I fill that role,” he says.
Ebere says talking about sports has been one of the ways he’s found to make connections with others. He has bonded about the World Cup with people from all over the world, including Peru, Romania, and, of course, New York.
A soccer player in high school, Ebere will also be rooting for Nigeria, but unlike Odeba he will be cheering on least through the first round of play—his favorite players, Christiano Ronaldo of Portugal and Eden Hazard of Belgium.
Difficult journeys
Mohamed Abdulla was forced to flee his home due to political unrest in Tanzania, leaving the idyllic archipelago of Zanzibar because he was under persecution by the country’s ruling government, he says. As a member of the Civic United Front political party, Abdulla, 30, was a wanted man.
“They were looking to kill me,” he says. “You can’t hide forever. That’s why I decided to move here.”
Abdulla traveled from Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, to the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa, to Togo in West Africa, and finally, to Newark Airport, where, like Odeba, he was detained for six months before winning asylum just over a year ago.
It was a tough decision. He misses those still in his home country: his parents, his wife, and his daughter Areefa, who is almost 3 years old.
At first Abdulla was aided by the IRC, which secured him a job interview with WeWork. And the rest, he says, is history.
“This is what I wanted to do,” says Odeba, based at WeWork 25 Broadway. “To work together with the community, with friends, to get to know different people, to grow my studies, to get the different benefits. I’m happy.”
Olivier Marambo grew up in the Democratic Republic of Congo in Kivu, a region that borders Rwanda and Burundi to the west. In 2007 or 2008, war and other “insecurities” forced Marambo, 31, to seek refuge in Kenya, where he lived under the protection of the United Nations Human Right Commission and worked as an educator.
After nearly a decade in Kenya, Marambo, secured a visa and came to Chicago in 2016. Though he was far from his two children, ages 3 and 6, his brother was already living in the Second City.
It’s at WeWork where Marambo continued to grow his American community. A person at WeWork introduced him to a local church, enabling him to find a welcoming place of worship. In Africa, the church was an important place of work and comfort for Marambo, who used to sing there and translate for the deaf using sign language.
Hassani Papin, 27, is also from the DRC, from a territory called Fizi. When he was an adolescent, Papin escaped war in his home country and fled to safety in neighboring Tanzania, just across Lake Tanganyika to the east. He finished high school in a refugee camp run by the UNHCR and after graduating worked a number of jobs, including as a social worker specializing in hygiene, and also as a veterinarian.
When he arrived in Chicago in 2016, he enrolled at Truman College to study English as a Second Language. It was there that he first met Marambo—and where they realized that they were, in fact, cousins. Marambo, who was already working for WeWork, suggested Papin find a job at the company.
Finding a community
Though neither Tanzania nor Congo qualified for the World Cup—only four African countries are represented in the field of 32—Abdulla, Marambo, and Papin remain undoubtedly tied to the soccer communities, if not in practice then at the very least in their hearts.
In Zanzibar, playing soccer is tradition, says Abdulla. In the World Cup, he’ll be cheering for Brazil and his favorite player, Marcelo Vieira. In New York he often plays soccer in Brooklyn—with his Tanzanian friends, sure, but with his Jamaican friends, too.
Marambo, who will also be cheering on Brazil, regularly plays on a local soccer team whose members include both Americans and Spaniards. His cousin, Papin, is always looking for a game around Chicago, noting that simply asking another person, at WeWork or elsewhere, if they play can lead to healthy competition—and friendship.
“Soccer helped me find a community in America,” Papin says. “I have a lot of friends. All of my coworkers are my friends.”
Though this will be his first time watching the World Cup in the U.S., Papin is looking forward to sharing that moment with his colleagues.
“We will socialize,” he says. “Watching the game with them will be a nice thing that we can do together.”
Photos by Frank Mullaney