CAN CAN, Part Deux

(One of two entries today)

 

Hunter Thompson Quote With No Context

 

"I slapped him again, then I gathered my change and my mail and my newspapers and my notebooks and my drugs and my whiskey and my various leather satchels full of weapons and evidence and photographs."

 

Semifinal, Cameroon vs. Ghana: "There's not enough pants where there should be."

 

I hopped on my friend Yotti's moto to go to his house to watch the Cameroon-Ghana semifinal match of the Africa Cup of Nations (CAN – French abbreviation).  I swung my leg over the seat and the seam of my pants from the bottom of the zipper, arguably the most important part of your pants, ripped.  As we descended into the quartier, the breeze in my pants where there shouldn't be one was too much; I knew I'd have to go back to my house.  I also happened to be holding a long baton of fresh sugar cane and a bag of granulated sugar that Yotti handed to me earlier.  I hesitated as we approached his house to tell Yotti that we had to go back since the game had just started.

 

"Yotti, mon pantalon est très déchiré.  Il faut aller chez moi."

"Mais, le match a commencé.  On peut coudre ici."

"Uhh, non, la déchirure est trop grande."

 

Yotti laughed and started to turn his moto around, and I handed the sugar cane and bag of regular sugar to his confused son.  ("But the match is just starting," the son said.)  Yotti zoomed back to my house, and he and the guard laughed at my predicament as I went inside and changed into a pair of jeans, then I got back on the moto and we made a beeline for his house, almost hitting at least two people in our haste.

 

"I love speed," says Yotti as we approached a large group of people walking.  "On the road to Garoua, I get up to 120 km/h."

 

We didn't need to be so much of a hurry.  Cameroon lived on the edge until Nkong scored the only goal of the game in the 75^th minute.  He grabbed a pass from Eto'o Fils as he streaked into the goal box on the left and chipped the ball past the goalie, quieting the home crowd.  (CAN is in Ghana this year.)  The Cameroonian defense, led by my hero, the captain, R. Song (#4, not to be confused with A. Song, #15), were the MVPs of the game.  Cameroon never really controlled the ball, but they capitalized when it counted.  The most bizarre moment of the game came in the 88^th or 89^th minute when Song was being carted off the field (he would miraculously recover, like most soccer players, two minutes later), and one of the nurses did something to make another Cameroonian player inexplicably push – yes, push – the nurse to the ground in front of the referee, earning a red card and leaving Cameroon with 10 men with 4 ½ minutes of injury time left and everyone else confused as to why he would pull a Zidane.  (My definition of  "to pull a Zidane" is to do something so stupid at such a crucial time that you just stare at the replay not knowing what to say.)

 

After the game was over and an audience at the TV studio in Yaoundé sang the national anthem, Lagdo was "feteing" and kids were running down the street in glee, and the moto ride back to my house was happy and the stars were bright.

 

Finals, Cameroon vs. Egypt: Pink Eye

 

The stars on the night of the final against Egypt were dull.  I caught a case of pink eye the day before because, well, if you've seen Knocked Up, I hope that's not the reason, so my vision was a little fuzzy.  I've never had pink eye before, and I have to say I never knew pus could flow from a person's eyes like tears. 

 

I woke up Saturday morning and my left eye was watering nonstop, and I thought I just had something in it.  I started washing my eye out with saline solution, and I watched in the mirror as my eye got redder and began to swell.  When it started to be painful, I knew I had to go see the doctor.

 

Luckily for me, Lagdo has an Ophthalmologists Without Borders (OSF), the eye doctor equivalent of Médecins Sans Frontières, within the district hospital that's 100 yards from my house.  I walked over there, they were open on Saturday morning, and the Cameroonian guy working there just looked at my eye for a minute (shined a flashlight in my face, actually), handed me some special eye drops, and asked for 2,000 cfa ($4), 1 mil for the consultation and 1 mil for the drops.  I went back to my house, and the drops with the saline solution have cleared everything right up within a few days.  (Also, OSF has had French or American doctors come and work in Lagdo since 1987, when it opened, up until a few years ago, so it's all Cameroonians now.  I've always heard about nasaara doctors in Lagdo, and now I know what they did.)

 

By Sunday evening, my eye had stopped leaking pus and was merely red and scratchy.  (My right eye had a mild case, so it was mainly just red.)  I went over to Yotti's house again, and we watched with his family as Egypt dominated Cameroon, continually pressing forward and being tougher.  Still, Cameroon's defense held off the Egyptians until a defensive blunder by my homey R. Song at around the 75^th minute.  Song couldn't get control on the left side of the box as he chased the ball toward the Cameroonian goal with an Egyptian tailing him.  The Egyptian was able to poke the ball to an open attacker, who shot it under the diving goalie.

 

The Egyptians were the best team throughout the tournament, never losing a game.  They were more cohesive and tougher than their opponents, and they have who is considered the best goalie in Africa.  When Egypt beat the tournament favorite Cote d'Ivoire, led by Didier Drogba of Chelsea, in the semifinal, Cameroonians were worried because the Pharaohs were the only team to have beaten Cameroon during the group stage.  Egypt has now won six Africa Cups, and they won the last tournament in 2006, so they're on a roll, and Cameroon continued to show that they are soccer power on the continent.  Next up is CAN in Angola in 2010, which I think acts as a qualifying tournament for Africa for the World Cup in South Africa later that year.