On my way to the World Cup

Africa has gone crazy with the World Cup. Ugandans are very excited about it, they are avid followers of global football, probably specially the UK Premier League, and we have seen advertisements and comments everywhere about the World Cup. One of the companies who has spent the most is MTN... I have seen lots of cars around Kampala branded with the 'Let's go 2010' for months; well they are one of the big sponsors of the tournament, so it makes sense.

But in any case Africans are definitely proud of the World Cup taking place in the Continent for the first time. And although Ugandans don't have their national team playing there, they are supporting other African teams. We watched the inauguration game (South Africa vs Mexico) in the bar of Protea Hotel, which may I say, is THE place to watch football for Kampalans, and everybody was screaming, clapping and cheering in summary for South Africa. There was only one lady, one of my friends in fact, enthusiastically supporting Mexico for some reason... we all felt it was a bit strange as she is Zimbabwean, but then, maybe it is not so strange not to support the neighbours... read British people not being particularly supportive of French and German or even Spaniards not being supportive of French!

In any case, we decided to join the football fever and we are actually heading down to South Africa to watch three games. We will watch some of the big guns like Argentina and Italy, and actually also Cameroon. I have been before to South Africa, although only to Durban, so it will be interesting to go now again, this time after spending some time in Kampala... people keep on telling me that I will just feel like I am in Europe again.

Then there is the thing of the robberies and so on that we have started to hear since the beginning of the World Cup, specially my family in Spain have been paying a lot of attention to it since they know that we were heading down to Johannesburg. What can I say, I hope that everything will be fine, we all know though that it is better to be safe than sorry so my beautiful marriage rings which are perfectly safe in Kampala have gone into the safe and I have replaced them with a nice $2 bone ring... very African!

Of course I will be cheering for Spain, and I have bet on them being the winners... let's hope they make us very happy like in the last Eurocup! Viva España!!


Some related links to enjoy some reading about Spain in the World Cup

http://spain.worldcupblog.org/

http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5hqML_DoJb4Tb05ik4ujEroOUXWLA

http://www.elpais.com/deportes/futbol/mundial/seleccion/espana/