Football Joy and Genocide Mourning Preparations

I have not missed many Barcelona games in the last year, and I was certainly not going to miss the big game last night. Dilemma, though: the upscale place 'uptown', where we usually watch the games, has just one screen, and they were definitely going to show Chelsea-Manchester, as Africans are just wild about English teams (loyalties are now re-distributed, as main love Arsenal is out of Champions League). We thus needed a longer expedition downtown, to one of the real popular football venues - i.e. dark, stuffy rooms, full of several hundred passionate fans, watching the two games on the two side-by-side huge screens.

I persuaded my American colleague Stacy (a Barca-fan-by-way-of-hanging-out-with-me) to go get a beer first at the 'Kenyan bar' in town, and then we moved next door, to Amani Soccer Center. 300 RWF ($0.50) to get in (we were the only ones to carry beers inside as well), and urged we were to move to the far side of the room - corresponding to the Barca screen. I was proudly wearing my Barca shirt (purchased in Barcelona a few months ago), which attracted a lot of noises from the audience - and although my Kinyarwanda is practically non-existent, I did sense the hate in everyone's voices (Barca being the team that kicked Arsenal out two years in a row, of course).

We were lucky to get some of the last chairs available, and ready we were to chant at 8.45, when power was cut. They brought the generator to life in a few minutes - long enough, though, for us to miss the Iniesta opener. No regrets, however, as goals kept flowing the entire night. Deep down, I was feeling sympathetic towards Lucescu, whose gimmicks again attracted a lot of laughter from my African watching companions. And I started dreaming of the four El Classicos that would basically follow in the next three weeks. WOW!

Sometime in the middle of that game, I had to turn to Stacy (who is Norwegian by descent, therefore as fair-haired as these Africans can only dream of) and asked her is she felt remotely uneasy there. I certainly didn't, and I somehow thought I should: we were these only two mzungus, and the only two women on top of that, in the middle of a screaming, sweaty manly crowd, in pitch dark, with no way 'to escape'. Stacy assured me she was fine as well. Bizarre, over all, how one African country with such a bloody history would make us feel so incredibly safe overall! Pretty scary thought, sometimes... Even more so at this time of the year, as we are commemorating the 1994 genocide, and tales of unfathomed cruelty and human bestiality surface in every conversation.

As the country prepared to go into mourning the next day, celebrations for Barca and Manchester victories in the streets were restrained. We walked home onto our recently publicly-lit street, supremely happy for the wonderful game, and prepared for a next day of silence and reflection. Another African paradox in the making...