A white coin gleams as the sun rises above Turkana at the whistle. Atletico Kakuma faces Naath FC on a field layered with dust and goat droppings. There are no floodlights or corporate branding and 600 spectators stand behind a barrier crafted from repurposed UNHCR sacks. One goalpost features a snarling lion hand-painted on it; the opposite one is marked by a tarp shaped into a flag. The audience leans in as Abdirahman, 14 seizes the ball on the right flank. It swells across three maneuvers, a shoulder feint and the goal (which is merely fishing line stretched between acacia branches). The cheer is loud enough to rouse the lifeless.

This is the Kakuma Premier League, an alternative World Cup, amid one of the largest refugee camps worldwide. Kakuma is a tent settlement and a temporary shelter for 275,000 individuals, from :

• South Sudan,
• Somalia
• the DRC,
• Burundi and others. The waiting ends through football.

Abdirahman was born here. Has never visited Somalia nor does he possess a passport. Every evening, he trains barefoot beneath the fading light aspiring to the 2026 World Cup. Nairobi has already taken note of his name. He remains an undocumented player in official football. The ball never asks for identification. He dabs blood on a fresh piercing on his toe.

Gal, a 28-year- South Sudanese refugee who escaped the conflict in Juba as a teenager leads Kakuma United, the sole refugee team registered in Kenya’s professional leagues. His squad is distinctly diverse: Congolese midfield creators, Burundian goalkeepers. Quotas demand that other ethnicities limit rivalries off the pitch by keeping them to 20 percent. In 2018 they were defeated once by a Kenyan rival and shortly after the league was shut down when machetes appeared following a disputed penalty. Football heals us Gal remarks. It recalls the past.

 The sport represents a revolution, for women. Malka Kalo, 22 serves as the leader of the Divas league team called Rising Stars. She works out early in the day prior to attending literacy classes. Her boots were a present from Awer (Kakumas most renowned native now an Australian international who scored in the World Cup final). Kakuma hosts 592 teams, with 73 of them being female.

The pitches are shared with animals the floodlights are extraordinary. When Malka dribbles past a defender the cheering is, unlike that of any other stadium. Then there are the individuals. Thierry and Salum men from the Horn of Africa once employed these matches to find relief in a camp where being homosexual remains a cause of fatal risk. They are now being brought back while the league continues to train coaches to recognize trauma symptoms and hold sessions, with Harambee Stars forward Dennis Oliech on the significance of consent and respect during practice breaks.

This routine is reiterated daily as the sun sets. As the grown-ups leave to fetch supplies children chase the ball well beyond the adults’ view. Solar lanterns flicker overhead suspended on poles like star patterns. Abdirahman sets up for another kick Gal shouts commands Malka ties her laces tighter, than before. Nothing fades in the desert except hope. In a world they built to endure there exists a language promising the future and that language is football.

As the 2026 World Cup approaches, Kakuma would organize its own Hope Cup (crowdfunded flights, begged visas, one last trip to be seen). The spectators will observe the world in air-conditioned stadiums. Here, under a sky which is vast enough to receive all the lost countries, they play. Since in this red-dirt square, they are not refugees, ninety minutes. They are citizens of the game.