Africa Cup of Nations

Lately has been quite exciting with the soccer tournament going on (I get nightly updates on the BBC). Unfortunately, Senegal has already been booted from qualifying rounds. However, the fact that there are so many soccer games being played, and there is a single television in village, it can be a big event. Let me elaborate. I was sitting in my compound with my host father after drinking tea with a few of his friends when they invited me to go a few compounds over to watch a soccer game. I agree and meander over. I am given a plastic chair under the shade structure and watch as a television is pulled out from a hut and placed on a table. A cable box is then brought out as well, and wires are connected. A mat is hung behind the set up to block out some of the sun. A plastic jug of gas appears and three, single, liter bottles are filled through a small tube (after three people suck on the tube to get the “gas flowing,”) and little boys leave, and then I hear a generator start up in the distance. At the start of the game, there are about twenty people watching (myself, the only female). However, by the end of the game there are upwards of thirty, a few more women who have completed their cooking. The television is turned off for an hour until the next game starts. At the end of this game, there were easily nearly fifty people watching. I walk back in the dark following my host dad to have a late dinner. Every day now, I am invited to go watch the “tele.”