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Like most others who were able to, I took up a new hobby at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic - boxing. Initially, I was looking for something new and challenging that would keep me active. Yet the more I boxed, the more I fell in love with the dance of breath control. Something that becomes especially in moments of absolute exhaustion. I started wondering, where are all the other girls who box in Rwanda? Jab is an on-going visual documentation of the female boxers in the Inkuba Boxing Club, a local youth boxing club in Kigali, Rwanda, with boxers of varying ages and skill levels, mostly from low-income earning families.
As a relatively new sport in the country, boxing comes with its unique challenges, but especially so for female boxers. In addition to funding challenges, a primary and regional issue when it comes to local female boxing matches is the lack of girls boxing teams in East Africa to begin with. Since I’ve begun photographing the club, over the course of two last years, some of the girls have had at least one fight, with the COVID lockdown affecting boxing schedules.
With this project, I hope to spotlight these amazing, and very often underrepresented, athletes. Even though this sport is still niche and new, I’m excited to see where the girls, and the sport in general, end up in the next few years. My goal is to create imagery with these girls that they’re proud of, and as a small way to document their achievements and moments of joy both inside and outside the ring.