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Retired Football Kenya Federation (FKF) Premier League player Adams Ewoton has taken football back to his home village of Soweto, Township Ward in Turkana County to rehabilitate teenagers against early childhood marriages, cattle rustling, and banditry.

In the dusty fields of Soweto village, Ewoton tells me that he was born in Machakos County in 1994 where his parents were working but later migrated to Nairobi and grew up in the sprawling Mathare slums, an advantage that exploited his footballing skills from a younger age to be noticed by Mathare Youth Sports Association (MYSA) scouts, a feeder program to 2008 KPL champions Mathare United fc.

“In Mathare, football is all we know. I dreamt of playing like Harambee stars striker Dennis Oliech and even was nicknamed after him and had to change positions from being a midfielder to a striker,” said Ewoton as he spoke exclusively to People Sports from his base in Turkana.

His lucky stars shone brightly on him as he made it to the final cut of the Norway Cup bound team in the year 2013 Under the tutelage of former KPL side Nakumatt Fc assistant coach Anthony Muthee Mwangi for the under 13 boys’ team and later made the squad again in 2009 with the under 16 team.

Ewoton’s dreams were on the verge of coming to reality as he continued idolizing Harambee Stars all times top scorer Dennis Oliech, coming back to the country from Norway and continued to work hard as a striker, but every time he went back to his village in Turkana, it broke his heart to see that there was no any football activity going on.

While in high school he got picked up for the national under-17 side going ahead to being captain in 2009 and 2010 respectively, later graduating to the under-20 Harambee Stars in 2012 before being noticed by second-tier and first-tier Kenyan football clubs.

The now-defunct Sher Karuturi came knocking, a door he answered right after his high school completion lasting for only a season in Kenya’s second-tier football league before returning to his parent club Mathare United since he was a product of their youth system at MYSA.

The bumpy Kenyan football terrain later caught up with him as he failed to secure a first-team position and had to move to the then Thika United before playing a level down again with Administration Police (AP) and finalizing his playing career back to the KPL with Ken Kenyatta’s Talanta Fc, finishing high on the top of Kenyan football league.

A nagging knee injury he incurred during his time at Talanta forced him into retirement in 2019 aged 29 years then, but his love for football gave him little choice but to turn into coaching as he now embarked in enrolling for the Football Kenya Federation (FKF) coaching courses, a journey that has seen him earn the Confederation of African Football (CAF) license C.

“With this license I now have the motivation to stay in football though jobs are not as readily available for young aspiring coaches like me.

“The best way for me to put my skills into practical’s is to go back home and try to implement whatever I have learned in class into reality,” Ewoton said and added that the sorry state of young men and women from his village getting lost in vices such as early childhood marriages, cattle rustling and banditry was also another driving factor that took him back to Turkana.