Football and Elections
We are once again stuck in Douala after spending 3+ days on the coast in Limbe where it was nice to relax, but a bit boring. Douala is a bit boring, too, and it is easy to see why it is not a major travel destination. Yesterday we visited the central market and it was by far the best market scene I have seen in Afica or Latin America. The people are exceptionally friendly and they had a lot of unusual things for sale such as the red palm oil that they produce and consume in huge volumes, odd-looking vegetables and fruits and plant materials such as bark, traditional medicines, and animal parts as well as the normal stuff like clothes, chickens, goats, pineapples, etc. I was definitely the freak of the market and people loved saying hello to me. Pam got a good view of what it is like to be mzungu in a local situation in Africa and she thought all of the attention was fun. It is fun! We struggled trying to find out what some of the odd stuff is used for, but there are a surprising number of Cameroonians that speak English well to help us through the questions and answers. Two guys got me to try chewing a bark that has some medicinal properties and it was horrible, but it definitely affected my head even after spitting it out after a couple of minutes. I could not find bushmeat for sale, but I did find stalls selling animal parts such as tortoise shells, forest animal skins and snake skins including one that we opened up that was a python that was about five meters in length. We only scratched the surface of this huge market in over three hours and we will go back if this Douala episode continues. We are supposedly leaving the city by plane on Thursday for the northern part of the country, but who knows since we are in the Cameroon twilight zone.
While in Cameroon, the Africa Cup has been going on in Ghana. This is a big football tournament that has the attention of most of Africa as well as the football world in general. Cameroon qualified for the semi-finals last night so the excitement is high. I’m not too excited by it. Although I become more anti-professional sports as I get older (let’s see… in 2007 the professional bike world fell apart due to proof that most if not all of them are doping, MLB had its doping world blow up including significant accusations about my favorite player Roger Clemens and the “perfect” New England Patriots cheated!!!!), I have always had issues with football. People say it is great because they play 90 minutes straight without commercials, but it is some of the most boring 90 minutes in sports to me. It is a game with fantastic male athletes who are constantly faking injuries only to pop up a couple of minutes later like nothing happened. Their acting could win Academy Awards and certainly is up their with WWF antics and I just do not understand why it goes on. Boston fans would go nuts if their players acted like this! I also do not like how haphazard the sport is mostly dependent on the ball taking bounces of its own. It may have very skillful athletes, but it seriously lacks in any strategy such as in baseball and American football and it definitely lacks the hard-hitting of rugby and basketball. What I really love about football is that it is the World’s sport followed by more people than anything else with a passion not found with any other human activity. Interestingly, what I hate the most about football is that so many people follow it with so much passion that they could be using to address real issues in their countries.
Jean Pierre made a very telling comment last week. He hoped that the Cameroon team would not win. He hopes that because he lives in a country with lots of problems including a democratically elected dictator of 25 years, a deplorable infrastructure affecting business and food distribution and an elite that control everything while regular people suffer. He does not want the country feeling good just because their football team wins a tournament. I told him how I have seen this in multiple countries with the worst being Argentina where it is all about the football and everything else be damned. This single issue affecting so much of the impoverished world is enough to make me anti-football. It would be nice to see so much energy placed into solving their poverty and educational issues so that people could kick back and relax and watch what are just GAMES.
I do wish Kenya had a good national football team. They don’t and they did not qualify for the Africa Cup. Kenya could use something national unity-wise right now. A good distraction to stop the killing would do wonders for them. Maybe they will have some good runners in the Olympics, but that’s six months away. Maybe the US election will do it.
Today is a big day in America with Super Tuesday. Getting an absentee ballot during my short visit was too much of a hassle so this will be the first election since 1982 that I will not partake. That is a bit disappointing, but it is what it is. I dismissed Obama about thirteen months ago when Nancy of Explorers Corner shared her excitement for him in Panama. My issue is that he does not have the experience. I told her that John McCain is the most qualified person for the job in my lifetime and the Democrats would figure out some way to screw the election up and put McCain in the White House. I have tried to like Hillary, but there is something about her that I cannot figure out that prevents me from wanting her as president and certainly has nothing to do with her sex. In the meantime, Obama has grown on me. I asked Pamela if there is someone in Kenya that can pull that troubled country together and it appears there is no one. So now I am wondering if there is something big going on where that person is a Kenyan descendent running for president of the USA. I believe the issues in Kenya are much bigger than Kenya and the world has to figure out how to make these post-colonial countries work so I am hoping Obama can apply some attention to the matter after becoming the next president. Also, I truly detest the decisions made to take America into war against Iraq. I said from the beginning that I will not vote for anyone that voted to do just that. So I will never vote for Hillary or McCain and I am unfortunately prejudiced against Mormons eliminating Mitt. I am also a huge fan of immigrants to America so I cannot stand candidates like Huckabee who want a wall built between two countries and place so much blame for American problems on the people that come to our country to perform jobs none of us want to do because we are too busy supporting the payments on too expensive wars, homes and automobiles. Obama is not the perfect candidate in my mind, but I like the idea of a minority from an immigrant parent running the show. It certainly can’t be as bad the current loser in there 🙂 Hopefully Obama will choose the only candidate I really like, Bill Richardson, as his running mate
Tags: Africa, cameroon, Travel
vagabondrick
Well Romney dropped out of the race yesterday, so no fears there. I have gone through a similar line of reasoning myself to come to Obama. ( I saw one campaign ad by Hilary in particular the cinched my decision) Then too I know several Arizona residents and have learned that McCain is known for making campaign promises that he has no intention of keeping (but then don’t they all to some degree!) I am so glad that Pam was able to get her visas.