Welcome And Book Announcement

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Hi, I'm Shelley Maurer. And I'm Cher Emmerich.

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Welcome to Life Lessons from Pickleball, where we engage with pickleball players from around the world about life on and off the court. Thanks for joining us.

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Before we get started, we have something really exciting to share. Our book, Life Lessons from Pickleball, is now available on Amazon, and a portion of every sale is donated to Operation Paddle Lift.

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Your purchase helps deliver paddles, nets, and resources to underserved communities around the world.

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Thank you for being a part of Growing the Game We All Love. Now let's jump into today's episode.

Meet Rwanda Pickleball Pioneer

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Welcome everyone to Life Lessons from Pickleball. Today we are super excited to welcome Kamujisha Zachary, who goes by Zachary from Kigali, Rwanda. Zachary is widely known as one of the pioneers of pickleball in Rwanda and someone who has been instrumental in introducing and growing the sport across the country.

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Zachary is a certified pickleball coach who built one of the first pickleball courts in Rwanda on family land, creating a place where new players can discover the game and the community can come together to play.

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And through grassroots coaching, partnerships with schools and community programs, Zachary is helping to build a sustainable pickleball ecosystem in Rwanda and across East Africa.

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Zachary, we love to start at the beginning. Today, pickleball is growing across Rwanda because of your work, but every movement has a beginning. Take us back to the moment when pickleball first entered

Discovering Pickleball In Saipan

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your life.

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Thank you so much, Shell and Shelley. I started pickleball in 2022, where I saw it in Saipan. I don't know if you know Saipan, it's in Mariana Trench. Uh so my wife, she's uh American, but who has lived here in Rwanda in the COVID, in this time of COVID, she has a job in Saipan to just go in uh uh to do to work in a hospital. Uh and then when I was going to visit her there, she's supposed to go there so for three months, and uh she goes for one month. I join her for two months, we stay there and then we come back. So uh sometime because she was working uh a night shift or day shift, I have to come to bring her. We had that car. We had one car at that time. So every time I come to see her, sometime because it was in the COVID period, there was another case. So because she was taking care of the patient, I have to just wait a little bit. Sometime the way I was waiting, there was a court of tennis down there. But this court of tennis, there was a lot of people who was there was exciting, and I hear them shouting and everything. From that time, I didn't know any rocket sport. I have never tried any tennis, so that maybe I can become interested to go to see it. So, but one day I decided I said, okay, instead of keep sitting in the car, let me go to see what those people they are happy for. So that's how I have I have gone. And when I go there, I found it's old people. So at that time, me, I was like a kind of giant. I was working in a gym, I was running, I was in the journey of uh uh reducing the weight. As all of you know, in uh COVID, most of people they were desperate, like we were drinking, we were sitting home, eating. So we were over kind of a weight. For me, I was overweight, and that's how I in that period I recognize Picoball, I was starting to see how I can reduce my weight. So when I was there, I see how people they are happy, but I was kind of like uh not like the game at all. The reason why I was not like the game is because first, I have never played like a sport. Second, it was my first time to see the sport. Third, it was old people. I was thinking no one can challenge me because I have this color of being challenged and everything. So I remember one day I was sitting there, I kept because like I was like liking how people they are happy, how like I was becoming having a fan of uh the way they played. But one day I was coming, I was sitting there, then there were three people who were coming, they wanted to play double, and then they told me, Hey, hey, black man, come here. So there they were, they used to call me black because I was kind of like uh the African man who were there. I say, Okay, let me come. My friend, what happened to me? I will never forget. I was thinking it's an easy game, and then when I played, I found that this game is not easy as I was thinking, and then I left. Then I waited outside, but I was waiting, feeling I want to play now because I was thinking, why this game is I was thinking it's so it's so small, it's so easy, and it's challenged me. Then finally, someone comes. He was alone and he told me, Hey, do you want to play? Then we play in another court. Guess what? This guy, he was old, he was like a 75 because I was like a very happy kind of like liking the game. I say, Okay, let me play this guy. Maybe I will beat him. Guess what? He beat me seriously. I say, Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. This isn't possible. So that's how normally I like the game, but I continue coming because I was uh embarrassing myself. I say I was thinking I'm the best person, I'm powerful, I'm speed, but I can play this game until I have a uh play, and someone uh convinced me that I don't even know anything. So that's how I keep coming because I wanted to beat this guy who who beat me. Because I'm not easy person to be defeated. Then I decided okay, I accept. I accept this guy beat me seriously. Let me go because there was another woman who were old too who knew how to play pickleball. I said, let me try there. Guess what? They beat me to single, single, they beat me. This woman kind of 75 years old. She beat me, she was so good in pickleball. That's how I say uh it opened my mind. Here in this country, Rwanda, we are the country which is empowering women. Our president Paul Kagame in the government empower women like our parliament, like a 65%. They are women. I'm 40 years, so I'm attached to

Building Courts And Replacing The Bar

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this generation, kind of old generation. Then uh yes, I respect women, but I was not like understanding this powerful thing. So until I say, so now I understand that yes, women they can beat me, even though they're old. So that's how when I was coming in my country, I say, so now let me kind of help the community and everything, because I have the other people who the other men who are thinking have the same thinking and mentality like me. I say, okay, let me bring this, and then maybe women in the spot in the physical world, they can perform too. I work in the tourism here in Rwanda. When I was seeing a lot of people who are playing pickleball, they are old people. So if I bring pickleball in Rwanda and we brand it in the tourism, they could see pickleball and then it's bring them to Rwanda. That's how they will know the culture, that's how they will know Rwanda. Wow.

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Uh that's what we love about pickleball too. It's so inclusive. You can play with people of all ages, and like you said, there's so much joy, laughter, and fun. That's what really is special about our sport. So tell us about building the first court in Rwanda. How did that come around?

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Thank you so much. So, as I told you, I have seen like uh my wife, my now she's my ex-wife, she finished the job there and then we come back here in Rwanda. So, in Rwanda, I had a business. As I told you, I had uh I have a quarter in the company here in Rwanda, but I had a bar, a bar and a restaurant. This bar and the restaurant, it was in my family compound. Have all this idea how the sport can empower women, girls, and when you see in this kind of like uh area of Africa, uh many women and many girls, they don't do sport and uh because of the old culture, but now we are in another era, everyone where everyone needs sport. Besides that tourism idea uh I had, but when you go in our history, bad history which happened in Rwanda in 1994, where there was uh a genocide against Tutsi, when you see the old people who are here, I mean like uh 65, 75, they are the one, they are the one who was our parents, they are the one who is ruling the country, they are ministers, they are uh soldiers, they are uh all those people, old people. So I found that in their young ages, it's where they were taking care of the country, they were stopping about genocide. So they didn't have this kind of time to enjoy their life or doing sport. So I found that I had an idea that like maybe if pickable, it's a new pickable is new, it's easier to learn. Maybe if we introduce it, these people it will not take them a time to learn it. Maybe they will hook up. So I had a lot of ideas about uh tourism and everything. I say, hey, we don't have anywhere. These things of pickable, it's nice, it can help people, it can help us too. Why can't we build the pickable inside my bar? Because people they can to drink, but if you build picobo, they will even drink less. The government was uh launching something which called tumores, let's drink little because there was a lot of accident and everything. So they they exposed that campaign tumores, let's drink little. Then I say, Okay, but that one is was in my head. I say, Me who sell alcohol in the bar, what can be my role of that let's drink less in these people, young people and everything. I found that you can tell someone to drink little when he has his money, and when someone is drunk, you can't advise him to drink less because he's being controlled by alcohol. But I found that the idea if I drink pickable and I put it inside the bar, if they hope that whoever who's drinking 10 bottles of beer, he will drink five because he's drinking and playing and come back drinking, playing, come back drinking. I start seeing miracles in the pickleball. So people start, some start stopping drinking. I end up what was what was the bar start being the playground. But me too, I was being happy seeing how I brought one thing and I was alone and the other people keep drawing me. I found the other people who used to play pickleball, but it has been introduced by uh another uh people from Haitian in Rwanda, but those people they didn't know what the pickleball is, they only have equipment, but they don't know what it is. So when they see me uh taking a picture and putting on social media, they discover that oh, we have a paddle. Oh, this is that the demo we have. So that's how them they joined me. So when they joined me, I don't know how like we came from one to two people who are playing pickleball, 50 people, 60 people. I hear I say I have an event on this area where I was there, was a bar, there was a hundred bars. I say, now I think this is my calling. Let me try to be the kind of solution of these people who are not selling sport. That's how I destroy completely my bar now. Because I I changed to pickleball, I called it silent home pickleball club.

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Nice. So much better to be addicted to pickleball than alcohol. Oh Jesus. Yeah.

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So uh Zachary, uh, I was we were gonna ask you what surprised you about bringing pickleball to Rwanda. Well, you've just surprised us with how you've incorporated pickleball into the bar and that reduces the amount of drinking. I just love that. So, what has happened since that first court? Are there more courts now in Rwanda?

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So uh it was one court, but I builded another court behind that one, but now we have another kind of like a four courts, I think. But I want to build like a 500 courts here in Rwanda.

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Say that again. You want to what?

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Now people join me. We are doing a team, so we are looking how we can build 500 pickleball courts here in Rwanda.

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500 pickleball courts.

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Wow.

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Are you also working with schools to introduce pickleball

Schools Mental Health And ADHD

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to children?

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That's a very good question. So uh I tried to approach the school because, like this passing year, it was a kind of like a raising of pickleball. People were not understanding pickleball, school was not understanding pickleball. I had to learn how I'm going to tell people what I'm seeing. So, what can I do? That's how I start learning which way pickable deals with a brain of human beings. I educate myself uh in neuroscience and neuroplasticity. I didn't sleep until I found a package idea because of this era where all the kids they have ADHD. So I start telling them, you see, that ADHD, what is happening to this kid? Say, what can't why can't we try this new game? Because you can't stop new things before you try it. So that's how I start like convincing schools, I tell them about ADHD. They didn't know what about it. So that's how most schools and most like the elector they start calling him. Uh Zachary, maybe you're right. You're right, you're right. So now Picoboy is boosting, is booming. Now we are almost going to take it to the whole country program of the school, and we will make sure that it will not be a school sport. No, it will be programmed because we are in the era of mental health and we don't have a lot of psychiatrists, we don't have a lot of doctors. So, but we have this infrastructure, we have this sport, including pickleball. I have my boy who's 10 years, so he had a mental problem. I have seen it that he has a mental problem which called swing mood, but nobody could understand or could see him. Then I didn't have this passion or this talent to talk with my children, and then I wanted it, but I couldn't know how until I started playing with Impeccable. Guess what? He's my best friend ever. We just talk and everything. So, all those kind of like uh the things I'm reading, I connecting with my life, with my things. That's how I present to the school, and then now the school they start accepting what we are talking. We me and my team, we are even working for how we are going to do a kind of uh uh uh program and you show them, and we are connected with a school in USA, uh with USAPATU, so they are helping us to give us some program to see how we can teach it in a Rwandan way.

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Wow, Zachary, you are an inspiration, and the way that you are using pickleball to bring healing on so many levels, healing of relationships between women and men, and the different tribes, and the children, and the adults, and all the changing people's drinking. And I mean, really, it's just amazing to me everything that you've done in this short period of time. So, in all of your adventures, what life lessons have you learned?

Life Lessons And How To Find Him

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The first lesson I learned, pickable, I knew myself. The more you come from the court and you go outside, you start shifting that mindset or that things you are playing, or whatever decision you're making, you're starting deprecating outside of the court. That's how I start knowing that sometimes I'm sitting where I'm supposed to sit. Sometimes I'm with the people I'm not supposed to be with. Sometimes I'm doing some action which is not I'm supposed to do because that's what happened in the pickleball. That's I have a new myself, I have a new my strength, I have a new my weakness, and then if I want support, I know what to ask.

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Thank you. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. So, how my friend, can people find you online?

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Okay, online. If you type pickleball Rwanda, if you write pickleball in Rwanda in Google, you will see who I am there.

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All right, that's the easy way. Pickleball in Rwanda will find the pickleball guy in Rwanda. Zachary. Oh my goodness. Thank you, thank you, thank you for being a part of this show. But especially thank you for everything that you are doing in Rwanda. The healing, the joy, the empowerment, all of that that is taking place in because of your desire to bring this silly little game that is so powerful on so many levels to your community and now across East Africa. Thank you, Zachary, so much. And thank you all. Oh my goodness, thank you so much for tuning in and share this episode.

Share Subscribe And Support

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And you know, we have this book called Life Lessons from Pickleball that includes many of our previous guests, and we'll have a volume two that will include Zachary as well. And so go to uh Amazon Life Lessons from Pickleball. There's an ebook as well, and the book helps support delivering pickleball paddles, nets, and balls to underserved communities around the world. So helping Rwanda, helping everywhere in Africa, Asia, South America, everywhere. So thank you all for tuning in, and we look forward to a new conversation next week. Bye-bye.

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Bye-bye. If you love our podcast, we'd be so grateful if you'd take a few seconds to follow or subscribe to Life Lessons from Pickleball. This ensures you'll never miss an episode and helps us continue these wonderful conversations.

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On Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen, go to the show page and tap the follow button in the top right corner. And on YouTube, click the subscribe button under any of the episodes. Thanks so much. Hope to see you on the court.