The first photos ever taken at Inter Campus Cameroon were in black and white. No, not because color photos weren’t available yet; it was the official photographer Franco Origlia’s choice to emphasize, through contrast, the nature of a continent that has always been full of contradictions and extremes. However, it is true that twenty years have passed since our first African project began, right there in Cameroon, when we went to open a pilot project with the Centro Orientamento Educativo in Milan and Francis Kammogne, the secretary of the Centre Sportif Camerounais, the organization that brings together all the sporting activities of the country’s oratories.

Over these twenty years, the Inter Campus project has expanded to involve children from three other sub-Saharan countries (Uganda, DR Congo, Angola), proceeding with the necessary care to build stable projects with reliable partners. This approach stems from our constant awareness of the sensitive nature of work involving football and young Africans, strengthening with our support the social projects already diligently carried out by NGOs or local associations. Twenty years of travel, meetings, and programs implemented or modified during their execution, because local realities often demand significant adaptation efforts and, at times, the ability to step back, reconsider, and re-evaluate everything. But above all, it has been twenty years of fun and games, and it is always moving to meet, in Cameroon as in Angola (our oldest projects), men whom we first knew as children. We saw them running barefoot on the muddy red earth after a ball, aiming for a goal marked by two banana branches planted in the ground, and now they return bringing their own children to play with the Inter Campus project (people become fathers early here), often crossing “to the other side of the barricade” to become educators and coaches for the younger ones themselves. And everyone remembers their Inter Campus years with great pleasure and affection, whether it was under days of incessant rain in Limbé, on the Atlantic coast, or in the scorching heat that literally cracks the earth in Garoua, on the edge of the Sahara. Many also recall the grand celebration in 2009, when we brought twenty children from each country to celebrate the project’s tenth anniversary at an “Inter Campus World Cup” in Tuscany, with everyone returning home with a bicycle each, gifted by one of our partners. We have even seen some of these bicycles still in use, because nothing is thrown away here, with one or more younger siblings of those original children riding them.

However, our project does not live on memories alone. We are always active, even during this period of limitations due to the virus, which seems to have partially spared sub-Saharan Africa but nonetheless experiences lockdowns and difficulties with movement and gatherings. Where possible (isolated villages, orphanages), limited external contact allows play to continue while respecting all local distancing rules, which we have reinforced by sending a protocol of conduct on and off the field to protect the health of children and coaches. Where playing together is not possible, our educators/coaches have received constant advice and instructions via video, using all social media to continue their technical and educational training, and maintaining contact with all our children and their families. This ensures that, as soon as this emergency ends, we will all be ready to return to full activity on the field, having never interrupted our formative work. We will once again see those children in Nerazzurri colors running on that red earth, embracing after a goal, and laughing with those bright white teeth no longer covered by masks, because football is the joy of playing together, overcoming every difficulty.