And the Winner is Africa

I’ve fallen a little behind in my blog this week. I was going to write something this afternoon. My first idea (which I might still do, and bore you with at a later date) was to talk about how I’m spending my afternoons: Attempting to practice my Amharic as much as possible, every afternoon, I head to what will be my house in the British Embassy compound and work with a local (all Ethiopian) decorating firm and help paint my house. My second idea was to moan about the food I’m missing: Week four here, and I am craving some fresh fruit and veg, along with chocolate and cheese.

I complained about the lamentable English performance earlier. No need to return to that. But I would like to talk about the World Cup more generally - more specifically, my experience of watching the (first African) World Cup in Ethiopia.

The first thing to say is that the World Cup has been great for my Amharic. Ethiopians are mad football fans, and complete experts. With subjects like the Germany-Argentina game, Brazil’s early exit and Torres’s off performance, its been easy to get talking to students, waiters and taxi drivers. And many have a crazy amount of knowledge about football, the Premiership especially. It’s been explained to me in great detail, why Liverpool should never have sold Alonso, why Roy Hodgson is the best manager in Premiership, and why the Portsmouth debt crisis could have happened only in England.

And going hand-in-hand with expertise has been massive passion. There is a passion for football - the screaming, shouting and cheering has been loud, everywhere. Bars and pubs have been packed, with everyone straining and stretching to watch some old, rusty, bad reception TV showing the match. Those annoying South African vuvuzelas are often heard in the city. And I even managed to talk football with an opposition leader.

The night Ghana played Uruguay, I was in a bar on the Bole Road (the trendy area of town). The bar was meant to the cool place to be (why was I there?), filled with Ethiopian’s up-and-coming elite. Yet everyone was stuffed around a TV watching the match. When Ghana was awarded the penalty in the dying minutes of extra-time, the shout was so loud that the cars below seemed to stop. And when they missed the penalty, and lost the following shout-out, the bar emptied. People said nothing. They just left, and went home. Talk to any Ethiopian now (Ethiopian is around a five hour flight from Ghana), and there is visible disgust at the way they saw Uruguay cheat themselves to victory.

There is a popular advert on TV here, for a South African bank, which talks about Africa United: Pan-Africanism is something completely new to me. I certainly can’t remember, for example, shedding any tears when Italy failed to get past the knock out stages. Ethiopians, however, even with their distinct history, language, food, culture and geography, have wanted Africa to win. For many here, Africa is no longer the forgotten continent. And looking at the pride in the way people here have talked about the Tournament, regardless of whether Spain or Holland win tonight (the cheers will be equally loud either way), Africa is the real winner tonight.