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The 2010 soccer World Cup has opened with a spectacular ceremony in Johannesburg. Hundreds of colorful drummers, singers and dancers, including many children, took part. The ceremony included a tribute to the six African teams that have qualified for the tournament, symbolized by the six branches of a baobab tree. It’s the first FIFA World Cup on African soil and in Liberia, too, soccer fever is palpable, even though Liberia’s team isn’t even playing. Jason Margolis has more.
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MARCO WERMAN: The World Cup on African soil for the first time is a huge deal for Africans anywhere, not just South Africa. Liberia doesn’t have a team in the tournament, but people in the West African nation are no less excited about the World Cup. The World’s Jason Margolis visited the small Liberian town of Saclepea, about an eight hour drive from the capital Monrovia.
JASON MARGOLIS: The local shoe store in Saclepea is 20 pairs of shoes on a tarp under a tree. There are no paved roads here, no sanitation, and no wired electricity. For entertainment, there’s not much to do other than play soccer, talk about soccer, think about soccer, or if you can, watch soccer. For fans in Saclepea, which means pretty much any male with a pulse, for the World Cup they’re gathering at video clubs; hot, cramped shacks with small 15 inch TVs from the 1980′s. The TV’s are powered by diesel generators and are connected to satellites. During the regular season, Peter Mandy watches three, four or five games a week and during the World Cup?
PETER MANDY: I expect to watch all.
MARGOLIS: All the games?
MANDY: Yes, if possible, all.
MARGOLIS: Do you have a job?
MANDY: Yeah I have a job.
MARGOLIS: As if that’s such a crazy question. Do you have a family, you have kids?
MANDY: Yeah I have a family, they live in Monrovia. I’m here working.
MARGOLIS: Oh so you can watch the games then, you don’t have to be back home to take care of the kids?
MANDY: I can stay out long as I wish.
MARGOLIS: You can pardon Mandy’s boyish enthusiasm. After all, this is the first World Cup on African soil. Here’s James Ballah, another man I spoke with outside a video club.
JAMES BALLAH: I’m a Liberian but part of Africa. So when the good image of Africa is going out into the rest of the world, I also feel proud of that.
MARGOLIS: I thought it being the first African World Cup, everybody here would be rooting for one of the six African teams. I thought wrong.
BALLAH: Well I’m for Spain because I’m a Barcelona fan, so I like Spain.
MARGOLIS: But you just told me how proud you are as an African, and then you say you’re rooting for Spain?
BALLAH: When I say proud of being African . . .
MARGOLIS: Like Ballah, most people here are rooting first and foremost for teams like Spain, Brazil or England; teams with strong chances of winning. People here tell me they respect the quality of the players first, and the uniform second. Aside from this being Africa’s first World Cup, this is the first World Cup in many years that people will actually be able to watch in Liberia. The country was ravaged by civil war from 1989 to 2003. Austin Bartuah, a local radio journalist says it’s taken years for things to get back to some sense of normalcy.
AUSTIN BARTUAH: Before they had, I think, one or two video clubs in this town. So people cannot afford $5.00 to even go in.
MARGOLIS: That’s five Liberian dollars, less than a dime. Today there are six video clubs in town. People can afford to go, so hundreds of men will cram into these small rooms. But there’s no guarantee they’ll actually see the games. Liberia’s rainy season is June and July. They’ve got crazy, biblical rain and that does a number on the satellite reception. When I went to see a practice match with James Ballah, the satellite went down, so the guy running the video club put on some reggae videos from the 1980′s. Does this happen a lot when it rains? You can’t get the signal?
BALLAH: Definitely. Once it starts to rain you lose signal right away.
MARGOLIS: What if it rains during the World Cup final?
BALLAH: That’s the inconvenient part about it.
MARGOLIS: Inconvenient is putting it mildly. If the men here couldn’t watch the final, it’s likely they would be depressed for months. As if by miracle this day, the rain let up and the game suddenly switched on. I started to clap my hands, but I stopped. Nobody else seemed to care. They sat in silence. I assume it was because this moment of triumph is old hat to them. Or maybe they just didn’t want to get their hopes up. Sure enough, moments later the signal sputtered. We lost the signal.
BALLAH: Yeah we lost the signal again. When the rain is heavy you just have to hope for the best for the weather to be cleared up before you can watch the game.
MARGOLIS: For The World, I’m Jason Margolis, Saclepea, Liberia.
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