The Winchester Rotary Club collected nearly 300 old soccer uniforms from the town's plethora of young Tanzanian athletes in a very successful inaugural campaign.



His future looked bleak. The boy's family knew their son, with two badly damaged hands, would never be able to work long hard days, the way Tanzanian men must, in order to survive.


"Endulen was so shy," LaRocca recalled from her 2004 trip to Tanzania. "Another boy helped him into the uniform, and suddenly, he was transformed into a Winchester soccer player. He looked so different."

The Winchester Rotary Club collected nearly 300 old soccer uniforms from the town's plethora of young athletes in a very successful inaugural campaign. And then, in a feat of unmatched kindness, they helped pay LaRocca's way to the struggling nation, where she passed the shirts and shorts out to eager, blossoming African footballers.


Hand-me-down soccer outfits can still be dropped off through the end of the month at Fresh Touch Cleaners, 757 Main St. The Rotarians ask only that jerseys and shorts be cleaned in advance, placed in a one-gallon Ziplock bag, and marked as either "adult" or "child," small, medium or large.


"They're going to Africa," she said. "I feel really happy that I know I'm giving to a worthy cause that will make other kids really happy. It's a really good program and I think other people should definitely participate."

The Rotary Club is also collecting deflated soccer balls, which will be given new life once they're tossed onto the dusty playing fields of the Serengeti savanna.

Covering 60,000 square kilometers, across Tanzania and Kenya, Endulen's people named the wondrous Serengeti, using the word from their Maasai language meaning "Endless Plains."

"The villagers live in semi-nomadic (tribes)," explained La Rocca. "They wear mostly red cloth robes, tied around one shoulder, and often carry spears and walking sticks."

July will mark the Winchester woman's seventh trip to the continent. Stateside, she works as an interior/exterior house painter, aerobics instructor, and part-time lecturer on African culture.




"For the first time, these children saw other Africans running and jumping, participating in organized sport on television," said LaRocca. "All these children in such a small room, and you could hear a pin drop."