Football and Football

Déjà vu: I’m in Southern Africa, the Pats are in the Superbowl and we’re playing the Giants. This time was going to be different, though; this time I resolved to stay up and watch it live in hopes of creating some butterfly effect that would break the curse of four years earlier. Luckily there were like-minded Americans (and one brave Dane) willing to do this with me. The game started at 1:30 here and lasted until almost 5 am. We kept ourselves awake with homemade guacamole, mango juice popsicles and a selection of Youtube videos (as we were sadly deprived of all the American commercials). It was a hair-raising, nail-biting experience, but not just because of the action in the game. Halfway through the 3^rd quarter the power went out and we were left sitting, stunned, in darkness. Would our determination be for naught? Would we have sacrificed our Monday productivity for no reason? Two … three minutes passed with only a flicker of light at one point to tease us. Finally, after about four minutes it came on and stayed on. It was bittersweet: if it had stayed off I wouldn’t have seen the multiple dropped passes, the inability of the offense to keep possession or score when they truly needed to, or the Hail Mary bouncing around in a sea of players with single digits on the clock. I guess our efforts were too small to change things, but I definitely prefer watching it happen to waking up to the bad news.

In the realm of what the rest of the world calls football, things were looking a lot brighter. In the Africa Cup on Nations, Zambia’s relatively untested and unknown side was doing serious damage in the group stages. They gave Senegal a good thumping (leading to numerous harassing messages from friends in Dakar), managed to draw with Libya and edged out the co-hosts Equatorial Guinea. In the quarter finals they thrashed Sudan 3 to 0 and then steeled themselves to take on the dangerous Black Stars of Ghana last night. The more stubborn of us managed to get in an hour of frisbee before the match started but as soon as we heard the waves of cheering coming from all sides of town we quickly called the game and booked it to the nearest bar. It was a ton of fun watching in a crowded bar; the spirit and excitement was infectious and compounding. It was a close game and Ghana looked like they were slowly breaking Zambia down. But, with about twenty minutes left, Emmanuel Mayuka curled in a beautiful ball from outside the box and gave Zambia the lead, as well as the confidence to keep Ghana in check. When a Ghanian player was sent off with a second yellow card, the win seemed within our grasp. Counting down the last seconds of stoppage time, we cheered Zambia onto their first final since 1994; less than one year after a plane crash off Gabon took the lives of almost the entire national team. The excitement level is growing higher and higher here; I imagine by Sunday’s game it will be at fever pitch. Vuvuzelas sound their distinctive call late into the night and cars everywhere are adorned with flags and Zambia-patterned cloth. I can only imagine what Lusaka will look and sound like if the Chipolopolo boys can pull off the upset over Ivory Coast this weekend.