On the Line (27 page)

And that was just the beginning. There were even more people crowded around the school site—about eighteen thousand. Can you
imagine? Some people had walked up to twenty miles just to be there. Each way!

Next, several local groups made various presentations. One tribe, the Masai, performed a special dance that someone told me
was centuries old, but it struck me as so vibrant, so contemporary, so relevant. In all, the ceremony lasted about an hour,
and there were songs, and dances, and poems. There were tributes. Everyone spoke English in Kenya, but they also spoke Swahili,
and a lot of these songs were in Swahili. I couldn’t understand a word, but every once in a while I could recognize my name:
“Serena!”

I’d never heard it said in such a joyful way.

I thought back to when I was a kid and I’d learned to say “hello” in Swahili—
jambo—
and I wished I’d taken the time to learn more.

Finally, the ceremony was finished and we had a chance to tour the school—and, I must say, I was overwhelmed. Completely blown
away. In just a few weeks, Build African Schools had completed this wonderful structure, using a professional construction
crew from Nairobi and local workers from the surrounding villages. One of the crew chiefs told me with special pride that
they paid their local workers $1.25 per day, even though the average local wage was less than 20 cents per day. It still seemed
like an impossibly low number, but this guy assured me that it was generous. Besides, he said, if you pay too much, the locals
won’t trust you. It’s better to overpay by just the right amount, and you’ll get back loyalty, dedication, extra effort like
you’d never find back home.

The school itself looked like it was in move-in condition. The computers were all wired. The plumbing was working. The desks
and chairs and school supplies all in place. The teachers were ready to get started. They’d set up this wonderful ribbon-cutting
ceremony out in front of the building, and I can’t overstate what a thrill it was to inaugurate the Serena Williams Secondary
School. By the end of our visit, with the school up and running, kids were downloading music and surfing the Internet. They
were so smart, so quick to figure things out. They were dressed in special colors that corresponded to their ages, and they
were all so unbelievably polite. I’d never seen such well-mannered, respectful kids, and I came away feeling like they deserved
everything that was being provided for them—and more.

I started to think, Wow, now these kids have a chance. Their brothers and sisters were dying from malaria and all these other
diseases, because they didn’t have access to education and medication and all those good things, and here they were being
presented with an opportunity to change all that. Building this one school, in this one village, was more meaningful to me
than anything else I’d ever done. It was more gratifying, even, than that first school launch in Senegal, because here there
was no language barrier. Here I could speak directly to these children and their families and hear in their own words what
this school might mean to their future. And here I could actually
see
the school, up and running.
Their
school.
My
school. With all these good people around to celebrate the opening.

I’ll say this: cutting that ribbon felt better than winning Wimbledon, better than winning an Olympic gold medal. Absolutely,
those accomplishments are important to me—but it’s just
me
. Here I’m helping an entire community, and hopefully changing all these young lives for the better. Here, I’m taking the
many blessings I’ve received from my God, Jehovah, and from all my hard work and good fortune, and redeploying them on the
other side of the planet, where they can contribute to meaningful change. And that meaningful change has spilled over into
my life as well. The thrill and excitement of all these opportunities, unfolding for all these children and their families,
lifts me up as well.

Obviously, I’d love to make that kind of contribution in the United States, but my money goes a lot further in Kenya. Here
at home, I give out school grants for college kids, but $60,000 doesn’t go that far. Even $600,000 or $6,000,000 won’t make
much of a dent. But Africa is my home as well. That’s how I’ve come to look at it. These are my people, too. They turned out
to greet us in such great, thrilling numbers—of course they are my people. Of course.

The dedication put me back in mind of that takeaway phrase from my first trip to Africa just a couple years earlier:
only the strong survive
. I started to realize it’s not only about strength; it’s also about opportunity. You need to be strong, but you also need
a shot. Strength is nothing without an opportunity to put it to use. A dirt-poor kid scratching out math problems with a stick
could have an iron will like you wouldn’t believe, but without a firm foundation her children and her children’s children
would still be stooped over in the dirt. They’d never reach up and out; there’d be no way to exercise that strength or put
it to productive use; and the cycle of hopelessness would just continue.

From Kenya, we moved on to Senegal, to check on the progress of my school initiative there, and to visit with more kids in
more villages. It was such a wild, wonderful, whirlwind tour, and at every stop there was a reason to be uplifted. Of course,
there was reason to despair as well, because we came across so much poverty and desperation on this trip, but we tried to
counter this in what ways we could. We really did. And in a lot of ways we succeeded.

Once again, I chose to find the power in the struggle of these good people. Once again, I chose to be lifted by their perseverance,
their resilience. Once again, their will became mine and I was strengthened.

U R a queen. U have been waiting for this moment. This moment has been waiting for U. For billions of years, this energy has
been building up in U for this moment, this tournament. It all happens now!!! Release and go. U don’t have to hit every ball
hard. Just relax & focus. U don’t have to be perfect. Just be strong, and brave. She’s the one who should be scared. She’s
the one who isn’t ready. “Lose control.” (Beyoncé—again!!!)

—
MATCH BOOK ENTRY

I
played a couple tournaments before leaving on that first trip to Africa in November 2006, just to take my measure. I’d been
away from the game for so long it felt a little like I was relaunching myself—Serena Williams, version 2.0. This version had
a few glitches after all that time on the shelf, to go along with a few extra pounds.

As you might imagine, I ate a lot during that period in Los Angeles when I wasn’t playing. There was a place called Stan’s
Donuts in Westwood, not far from where I lived; it’s considered one of the best donut shops in the world, and it just about
did me in. And, to make matters worse, I wasn’t doing any fitness training (unless you happen to count shopping on Rodeo Drive
as an aerobic activity), so those excess calories had nowhere to go but my hips and thighs.

I was in terrible shape, but I figured I could play myself back into form. Of course, it was naïve to think I could do so
without any criticism or scrutiny from the tennis community, but I couldn’t see any other approach if I meant to start playing
again in any kind of timely fashion. If I waited until I was completely ready to resume my career in an all-out way, I might
never get it going. I talked to my parents about this, and they agreed that the longer I was away from the game the harder
it would be to return. Venus, too. The thing to do was jump right back in and figure out what I needed to work on from there.

My first tournament after the long layoff was in Cincinnati—in July, a full six months after my third-round loss at the 2006
Australian Open. I don’t know what it was about that Cincinnati tournament, but it just popped out at me when I was looking
over the calendar. It’s like it was calling me to come play, and I guess I must have been ready to get back to it because
I listened. Right around that time, a day or two before I signed myself up for the tournament, I ran into this adorable little
black girl on the street in my neighborhood, who was just superexcited to see me. She hurried over to me and said, “You’re
Serena Williams!”

I must confess, she caught me a little off guard. I had my sunglasses on, and probably a hat, and I wasn’t exactly looking
my best. (Come to think of it, I might have been coming out of Stan’s Donuts, so she caught me red-handed, too!) So I gathered
myself and said, “That’s me.”

Well, this girl popped a smile so wide I could see her full set of teeth. She was so cute! She said, “I just love you so much,
Serena. When I grow up I want to be just like you!”

It had been awhile since I’d gotten this kind of star treatment, but coming from this adorable little girl, with that bright,
wide smile, it was just the push I needed to get back to my game. She told me how Venus and I were her role models, how she
had a big sister and how they called themselves “Venus” and “Serena” when they played tennis. She said, “You’re just so awesome.”

I said, “You really think so?” Just then, I wasn’t feeling so awesome, so it was good to hear.

We talked for a bit, along these same
you’re so awesome
lines, but then this little girl completely surprised me. She said, “I know you haven’t been playing a lot lately, but I
hope you start playing again soon. If you’re sick, I hope you feel better. I hope you come back because you’re still a great
player. I just know you’ll come back and be better than ever.”

Well, that just took my breath away. I thought,
If a little kid—
I’m guessing she was ten or twelve—
can look me in the eye and tell me I haven’t played my best tennis yet, there must be something to it.
So I gave her a hug, thanked her for her kind words, and raced home to look at some tapes of my past matches. I do that sometimes,
when I’m not feeling sure of myself or confident of my next move. It’s an amazing motivator and a powerful pick-me-up to pop
in a video of one of your Grand Slam tournament victories and put yourself back in that championship frame of mind. Right
away, it reminded me how much I used to enjoy playing, how much I used to enjoy winning. I looked at all this other footage,
too, of these other girls winning their Grand Slam tournaments, and I started to think,
I can beat those girls. In my sleep, I can beat those girls
. That’s what I always think when I see someone other than me or Venus holding that trophy—only here I hadn’t looked at tennis
in a while so it was a revelation, and it was all on the back of this uplifting encounter with this African-American girl.

She picked me up, this little girl, and she’d never know it but she set me right back down onto the career path I’d all but
abandoned, because I signed up for that Cincinnati tournament the very next afternoon. Like I said, it had been nearly six
months since I stepped away from the game, following that early exit in Melbourne. That’s a long time to be away from an activity,
even one you used to be really, really good at. I’d dropped to a rank of 139—the lowest I’d been since I was on my way up
in 1997. You know, on the way down, it was a whole other perspective. Back when I was starting out, it felt like I was going
places. Now, after all that time at the top, it felt like I was nowhere.

I didn’t play all that badly in Cincinnati. I actually surprised myself—I surprised a lot of people, I think. Nobody was really
expecting me to do all that much, so I caught my opponents unprepared. I beat the #2 seed in the first round—Anastasia Myskina
of Russia, 6–2, 6–2. To this day, I’m sure I beat her mostly on muscle memory. That, and my big serve, which never left me—thank
You, God! I remember making a conscious effort to win points as efficiently as possible, because it was ridiculously hot,
and I didn’t think I had the stamina to play too many long rallies. (As it was, I was huffing and puffing!) That meant going
for a lot of winners, at a time in my career when I might have been more patient, but I didn’t think I had that luxury here,
so I just pounded away at this girl. At some point, probably after I hit my first winner, I thought,
Wow, this is so great to be playing again.
And it was. The tournament organizers were so gracious, so welcoming. The fans were extremely supportive and generous. It
was just such an encouraging return, in every possible way. After that first match, I pushed past two American players in
the next two rounds—Bethanie Mattek and Amy Frazier, also in a straight-sets hurry. Vera Zvonareva finally knocked me out
in the semifinals, in a 6–2, 6–3 trouncing that more accurately reflected the quality of my game and my level of fitness.

Thinking back on that tournament, I believe I won those first few matches on shock and awe; players were a little in
shock
to see me out there, and a little in
awe
of my past accomplishments, so I managed to sneak past them into the later rounds. It felt good to be playing again, though.
Good and right and welcome. In some ways, I found, high-level tennis is like riding a bicycle. Once you climb back on, you’re
good to go. Only in my case, with that overall lack of fitness and those few extra pounds, together with the fact that the
players on the women’s tour kept getting better and better, it’s like I got back onto that bicycle on a steep uphill climb.
I could move the pedals, but I couldn’t really get anything going just yet.

Next, I earned a wild-card berth in Los Angeles a couple weeks later, which I thought would be a good tune-up for the U.S.
Open. And here again, that’s just what it was, for a stretch, until an up-and-coming Serbian player named Jelena Jankovic
sent me packing, 6–4, 6–3. This was before Jelena had cracked the Top 20, but she really took it to me that day, that’s for
sure. She didn’t really have much of a serve, but she could put her stamp on a game in every other aspect, and here she ran
me around pretty good.