World Cup fun
Greetings from Cape Town!
Excitement for the 2010 Soccer World Cup has been building in South Africa for the last six years. Outside each of the big airports there is a huge display that has been counting down the days since 2007. When we would arrive for holidays in past years, the displays would read some impossibly large and irrelevant number: 837 days to go! or 514 days to go!
When we moved back in December, the day count was just over a hundred. The marketers did a great job of building the excitement countrywide: special celebrations 100 days out and 50 days out, celebrations for the official openings of the new stadiums, etc. Continuous radio advertisements that all ended with a booming voice saying, “Can you feel it? It is here!” Starting several mnths ago, every Friday became “Football Friday,” and millions of people wore yellow South African team jerseys to work. In the last month, suddenly the blare of the long plastic vuvuzela horns became ubiquitous: bwaaaah bwaaaah bwaaaaah bwaaaah bwaaaaaah bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
The World Cup on its own is a huge spectacle: 64 games, 3 million tickets, billions of people watching on TV, etc. For South Africa, it is an historic nation-building moment. There are still naysayers who argue that the money spent on stadiums could have been spent on houses or just given to the poor. Maybe easy for me to say (we have a house), but the galvanizing effect on the nation’s conscience has been worth the investment. Collectively, South Africans seem to be looking at each other and saying, “Wow! We are actually pulling this off! We did it!” Having a lot of new infrastructure - airports, roads, train lines - is good too.
More immediate than the theoretical socioeconomic benefits, the experience has been amazing. I was in Johannesburg on Friday, the opening day, trying to get to the airport to fly to Cape Town. Everyone else was trying to get to fan parks or to the game itself. It seemed that every foot of roadway was crowded with cars flying South Africa flags, horns blaring, vuvuzelas blowing. It was an excruciating two and a half hour drive drive. I missed my first flight in eighteen months, and came extremely close to wetting my pants, but the atmosphere in the streets was electric. Even in the airport, dozens of people were blowing their vuvuzelas in noisy enthusiasm.
South Africa tied Mexico 1-1 in the opening match. When South Africa scored the opening goal, the entire country erupted in cheers. It’s like nothing I have experienced before.
On Friday night, we went to the opening game in Cape Town. The weather was warm and beautiful, the new stadium was spectacular, and the whole experience was exciting and fun. The kids’ school is about a five minute walk from the stadium, so parking at the school was awesomely convenient. We put Tallulah on my shoulders, and just blended in with the huge, festive crowd. The game itself was a little dull: France and Uruguay tied 0-0. But the experience and the positive feeling (and the giddy, deserved self-congratulation of South Africans) was great.
Our second game, on Monday night, reminded everyone that it is winter in Cape Town. We got soaked by a cold rain walking to the stadium. When it started to hail, India found us shelter in the back of a bratwurst-seller’s kiosk on the fan walk. A smiling German sausage man came back to his tiny grilling area and found four of us huddled together for warmth. He was gracious, particularly when we ought some bratwursts and congratulated him in German for his country’s 4-0 win over Australia the day before.
When the rain let up, we raced to the stadium to get under cover before the next downpour. It rained on and off during the game. Our seats were just at the edge of being covered: if the wind blew offshore, we were dry. If it blew toward the mountain: drenched. India was good natured but unamused: she bundled herself up like an Arctic explorer and lurked in the fully covered part of the stands. Zola and his friend, Dante, and I cheered our lungs out and pretended it wasn’t actually raining. We were glad that Tallulah had declared, “If it isn’t South Africa or America playing, I don’t want to go.”
Despite the rain, everyone had fun. South Africa is pulling off this great event. It is wonderful to be here.