England goalie tips Malawi farmers on agriculture, football future
England and English Premier League Portsmouth FC goalkeeper, David James, in Malawi on a three-day charity tour, Tuesday took time out to talk about agriculture and his football future.
“We have a wonderful farm here set up a few years ago. We are producing some very good crops hoping to provide physical demonstration of the capabilities for local farmers and farmers’ groups to produce better crops,” James said.
His David James Foundation has teamed up with a local NGO, the Samaritan Trust, to promote modern technology in agriculture to help raise funds to support under privileged children.
According to the player, “the idea is the farmers’ groups and individual farmers should come here and learn better farming techniques they can take back to local villages. We can then start helping educate a generation of Malawian farmers.”
This is the third time James is visiting Malawi after the English FA took him, a longside Manchester United stars Rio Ferdinand and Garry Neville, to the southern African country to promote HIV/AIDS awareness amongst Malawian youths.
“I’ll be honest, I didn’t know anything about Malawi before I came here,” he told PANA.
“The FA said: ‘Would you come out and do some work?’ I said: ‘Of course’…because it’s important that football has such a bond across the world and for an England player to be able to go into Malawi and help spread a positive message about HIV/AIDS and I felt it was my duty.”
James said he immediately fell in love with Malawi and set up his foundation mainly to raise funds to support under-privileged Malawian children.
He said he initially wanted his foundation to concentrate on academic and farming education and sports.
“But the concerns for myself and people involved were more about the agricultural side of things,” he said.
According to him, once his agriculture projects flourish, he will consider setti ng up a David James Sports Academy to nurture young talents.
He said he thought of concentrating on agriculture first because he believed that, other than advising people on safe sex as one way of slowing down the spread of the killer disease, “healthy people have a better chance of prolonging their lives and in fact healthy people have a better chance of not contracting AIDS in the first place.”
James is visiting Malawi amid the razzmatazz of pop star Madonna’s adoption of two children from the southern African country.
James laughed off the idea of adopting a Malawian child.
“Madonna did a great job by adopting kids here but…I am a single man, I have four children of my own…(adoption) is not something that I thought about personally. We have a farm here; that’s the main objective,” he said.
The England first-choice goalkeeper, who missed out on the last few national call-ups due to an injury he picked up during a club game, said he was back in form .
He said his team started pre-season training Thursday and that having done rehabilitation throughout summer he was “ready to go.”
James who keeps the record of most premier league appearances said he was committed to remaining at Portsmouth, though the club did not have a good season.
“My future is in Portsmouth, of course. It’s a great club, this season wasn’t the best but it was better than Newcastle’s and we are still in Premiership,” James stressed.
Asked if he feared for the club’s future after it lost key players like Glen Johnson, Lassana Diarra and Jermain Defoe within the past two seasons and are on the verge of losing Peter Crouch, the tall shot stopper said he still had confidence in the club.
“Every team loses players…Manchester United lost Christiano Ronaldo….that’s football,” he said.
*PICTURE- David James in Malawi with Edson Chagara
Tagged with: David James
Old Article more than 4 months. Comment is closed.
