When Iranian-Dutch writer Kader Abdolah first mentioned to another Iranian immigrant that he wanted to become a writer in the Netherlands, his fellow countryman told him, “Your dream is big, but this country is small.” A Nigerian would have told him, “Cut your coat from your cloth.”

One of the most common narratives told by immigrants—especially when their journey takes them from the Global South to the Global North—is that of abandoned dreams and abandoned lives. People who must leave their former lives as architects, bankers, doctors, engineers, and teachers to start anew in a new country as cleaners, laborers, and caregivers. People who sometimes have to abandon their old identities for a new opportunity; people who provide stories for immigration officials, who exchange a marriage of love for one of convenience. People who know what it means to change dreams, to contain dreams, and sometimes to abandon them. And if they’re lucky and persistent, they’ll one day manage to revive those dreams. But the problem with resurrection is that everything that’s resurrected is likely to change its form.
 
For the Star Boys, a West African performance collective based in Antwerp, Belgium, the dream of playing professional football in Europe was revived through an unusual form: theater. The Star Boy Collective grew out of a project by Sri Lankan-Australian theater maker Ahilan Ratnamohan. In 2013, he wanted to develop a dance theater piece with African footballers living in Belgium that would address the phenomenon of human trafficking in football. In exchange for the promise of food and 30 euros per session (three hours of rehearsal), Ahil recruited his first actors. Eleven auditioned, eight made it through, and went on to appear on stage in what would become the successful play “Michael Essien: I Want to Play as You.” In the following years, a total of twelve performed in performances in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. The cast rotates, much like a football team, reflecting their precarious situation, where court proceedings, deportations, or signed employment contracts mean Ahil can’t rely on a performer being on stage until he actually sees them there that evening.

Of the fifteen footballers Ahil worked with, three were deported, and one made it from a third-division team in Portugal to a highly paid contract with one of the top clubs in Angola. The rest live a life between dreams, hopes, and reality. I met Etuwe Bright Junior, Lateef Babatunde, and Aloys Kwaakum, three of the Star Boys who stayed in Belgium. Their reality is more impressive than even they could have dared to expect under the circumstances.

Junior, born in 1988 and raised in Festac Town, a middle-class neighborhood in Lagos, Nigeria, wanted to become a professional footballer since 10th grade. Not only was he a talented player, but he also had three brothers who were successful professional footballers for clubs in Europe. His parents – his father a farmer, his mother a shopkeeper – would have preferred him to pursue a different career path, but nothing could dissuade Junior from his ambitious dream.

At 18, he was scouted by an agent and brought to Belgium. This agent was looking for a player who could immediately secure a professional contract. He was all the more disappointed that the club he wanted to sell Junior to didn’t want to put him directly into the first team. “They wanted to sign me as a reserve player for six months. My agent didn’t agree.” One month and three weeks later, Junior was back in Lagos.

Junior speaks very softly, and he’s as particular about dates as he is about his carefully trimmed beard. There are no inaccuracies with him. But when recounting events, he’s not quite as detailed. I wonder if he learned this out of necessity. Belgians demand accuracy, even in casual conversations. Junior went through the entire process of becoming “legal” and faced officials who demand precise dates and a high degree of accuracy. At the same time, he had learned from conversations with journalists and other Africans that one must be careful about revealing too much information.

Junior spent a year and nine months in Lagos before returning to Europe via Italy with another agent. The new agent had a reputation for signing all his talents. However, as Junior discovered much later, he was outmaneuvered by another agent who brought in players from Africa for ten times the price. This agent always negotiated directly with the team presidents and didn’t work with other officials. Junior had the option of signing with a team in Italy’s third division and enrolling as a student to ease the bureaucratic hassle, but Junior had no interest in school. And if he didn’t succeed as promised, there was no incentive to stay. “Plus, after two months away, I missed my girlfriend. I wanted to go back,” he adds with a broad grin.

In 2009, Junior was brought to Finland by a Nigerian agent to play for a team that guaranteed him a 70 percent chance of signing a contract. But after two weeks, the same agent called and told him to lie to the club, saying he had to go “to Africa” unexpectedly, but in reality he should go to Belgium, where his European counterpart would let him sign with a better team. “You’re way too big for Finland,” he told Junior. Junior followed his advice. He was put up in a nice hotel in Charleroi, but in the two weeks he spent there, he was only taken to train with an U13 team once. He doesn’t know what went wrong, but he never heard from either his Nigerian agent or his Belgian counterpart again. Junior left the hotel and moved in with a friend in Antwerp, trying to find a team on his own.



The team he eventually found wasn’t the one he’d dreamed of, but one that gave him respect and recognition after his earlier disappointments. A team made up of African footballers attracted by the prospect of success in Europe and motivated by the success of their compatriots playing in the top divisions in various European countries—but who, for various reasons, hadn’t been able to achieve the same level of success. The team trained together every morning, and if they were lucky, some of them were selected for a “café football team”—the Belgian term for amateur teams that don’t play league football. Café football teams are made up of middle-aged Belgian men who play primarily for the camaraderie. The teams are usually supported by small businesses, and it’s not uncommon for the teams to hire two or three significantly better players to raise the standard of play. These players are invariably Africans who could have turned professional—if not abroad, then in their own country. “You dream of becoming a professional and end up in the 12th division,” says Junior.

Junior is now a legal Belgian citizen, but achieving this status wasn’t easy. He was in a relationship with a Nigerian-Ghanaian woman with Belgian nationality, whom he could have married to ease his path to citizenship. Unable to cope with his dependence on her and knowing it wasn’t “right,” Junior separated from her. However, to stay in Belgium, he had to prove he was a productive member of society by reporting to the city authorities every month and demonstrating that he had completed the required work hours.

Given that it’s difficult for a Black foreigner with rudimentary language skills to find work, this was quite a challenge, says Junior. Since 2015, he has been the proud holder of a Belgian identity card. That same year, he toured with the Star Boy Collective to perform in London—a privilege previously denied to him. Determined to succeed in Belgium, he took Dutch lessons (“It’s not easy to stay here and not be able to work, just because of the ‘registration’. You can’t even go to school!”). He tried to balance his dreams of becoming a professional footballer, a successful actor, and his work at a DHL factory: “I’d like to do theater, but society doesn’t give us the opportunity.”

When Junior first met Ahil, he mistrusted him because he looked like a journalist. “You learn not to trust anyone here.” But the promise of paid work as an actor was too great to turn down: “It was the only ‘black’ job I could do.” So he gave Ahil a chance and discovered, to his own surprise, how much he enjoyed acting. When Junior talks about Ahil and acting and his love for it, the dullness in his voice disappears. His eyes take on an almost feverish shine.

When he talks about misjudging Ahil (“I thought he was trying to make us look stupid in front of the white people with our stories”), he smiles apologetically. “I realized Ahil just wanted our stories to be heard.” And that’s what theater has given him: an opportunity to tell his story firsthand, to dismantle myths and false stereotypes, a chance to be understood. “Because people don’t understand you, they easily judge you. They think you’re lazy, don’t want to work, but you don’t have papers. If you eat three plates at a party, they think you’re greedy, but you don’t have money for food,” says Junior. He gives me his trademark smile again and says, “Theater is our national team.” It helped me find peace within myself and within Europe.”

Junior recently landed a role on television, playing in “Spitsbroers,” a Belgian TV drama about a major football club. He’s very flattered when he’s recognized on the street, but to survive, he still has to visit the job center and hope for work while he waits for his new dream to come true and earn a living.