Dude you're never going to guess what I just pulled off.
Huh? Who is this?
Who the hell do you think it is? I'm calling you from Africa--
Hahahaha..Heeyyyy!! What's up dude??
Not much man, I've got a good story for you.
Haha, Ok. Shoot.
-------------------------------------------------------------
(Earlier that day)
I had been running errands in Tamale all day: emails, photocopies of the periodic table for my Form 2 kids, market shopping, buying red pens, haircut (pictures to come), and I headed to my last stop on the to-do list. See if I can find a place to watch the BCS college football national championship game in January. I wasnt even sure if it was possible but I imagine with the technology now-a-days and the fact that Tamale is a big enough city, I figure that there must be at least one place with a satellite that I can figure something out with. I asked Bubu and he recommended the Alhassan Hotel; apparently he and others have watched some futbol matches there. So I showed up and waited for the owner, the plan being to have a quick chat before I caught the last car to my town. When he finally showed up I told him that there was a match I wanted to see on January 7th, from America. (One of my errands that day was to find out what channel and when the game would be). So he says "Well we have DTV so we get channels from America. Is it ESPN?" To which I excitedly replied "Yes!"
(BCS National Championship Game: Jan 7th ESPN/ABC, in case you're wondering)
So we go into his office and he shows off to me his satellite TV. It was funny the way he showed me the features, slowly and with a kind of lingering interest as if his fist time playing with this toy was not too long ago. The tell-tale sign of an older person explaining the details of a technology they just learned, is that they explain it at the --painfully slow-- pace which it had to be explained to them. When he hit "Guide" and it showed the list of channels, I was sold. But he continued and showed me times, examples, flipped through random channels; he was proud.
When he got to ESPN it flashed several fast sports clips and then lingered for a few seconds on that evening's lineup. At the end of the list? Doth my eyes deceive me? "College Football Highlight- Florida vs Vanderbilt - Gainesville, FL"
Wait. What!? You're going to get the gator game here live? Tonight!?
Now, I've been watchin these games 3 weeks late all season and fighting away any news to make the games surprising and fun (and keep in mind I was already wearing my Orange and Blue African shirt... like I do every Saturday.) I've been religiously supportive from across the world. So explains to me "Yes it seems so... but that game will not start till 12:15, just past midnight."
I thought to myself "hell or high water, I'm watching this game." I negotiated with the guy for an hour and a half, he even had his son come and help explain their side, almost pleading "The problem is the time...None of us will be here that late and who will watch the equipment after the match?"
Remember this country rises and rests by the sun, 12:15 is a retarded time to start a game, never mind that it's a 3 hour game. At 3:15 it finishes and around 3:45 the Muslims are all waking up to prepare for their first morning prayer.
I begged.."Look...You see this shirt? These are my team colors. I wear it every saturday, every single saturday because it's gameday. Then I have to wait almost a month to see the game. My team is ranked #1 right now in the country, #1. I've been in Ghana for 5 months and I haven't seen a single live game. You have a team you follow, please help me out..."
Finally they agreed. "Ok... Here's what we'll do: at 9 when our futbol matches finish, we'll set you up in our side room here. You'll stay there till your match is over and in the morning I'll come back to pick up the things." I almost flipped backwards in joy. I went to the bank, took out some cedis for a deposit and a fee for their help and went to Point 7 to buy myself a drink to celebrate. (Point 7 is a local spot in Tamale). I txted everyone that I found a place for the national championship and called Benito to tell him the good news as I poured myself a beer.
Benito: Hello?
Me: Dude, you're never going to guess what I just pulled off..
Benito: Huh? Who is this?...
(And it continued as scripted above)
We laughed together and I rambled on and on about how excited I was to see a game live. We talked for about half an hour while I tailgated at Point7 and when I hung up I got a reply from Jacob (another PCV in the north) about my BCS text. "Well I'm reallly more of an NFL guy, but the chance to see any American sports sounds great!" I immediately called him:
OK Jake. I got a proposition for you...
2 hours later Jacob joined me at Point7. This is quite a credit to him seeing as that he lives exactly 2 hours away (drive time, not counting wait-to-fill time) and it was already 7pm (remember what I said about this country and daylight) and that he had about 5 minutes warning. So we sat at Point7, talked, laughed and both got madd hyped to see the game.
In a very festive mood we returned and got set up. Turned on the TV and did a little dance in, my Orange and Blue wax print African shirt, and turned on ESPN.
12:00AM (Blaring announcer's voice)
"Hello everyone and welcome to the Breeder's Cup!
Yes it's a horse racing fan's dream today with crystal clear skies and the horses look great. Let's go down to the track to hear about what we expect to see today."
w...w-wh...what?
I watched the minutes tick away to 12:15 and almost got tears in my eyes like a kid who got cheated by the big kids in his neighborhood. The race came and went quickly, so at least there was some hope in that... at 12:15 exactly it showed a clip of Tebow YES! and instantly cut away to an intro for a golf tournament FUCK!
Amazing. It went to the scheduled broadcast and then cut to a simultaneous European Golf Feed. The way that one cut to the other... and then (thank the lord) went back again almost seemed like 2 guys were arguing over the feed (or trying to drive me crazy.)
Once I realized that the game was actually going to play out in full I relaxed, propped my camera on some benches, setup the auto-timer and took some celebration pictures of my achievement.
(Why I didn't just let Jacob take the picture I dont know, but back off, i had been tailgating for the past 3 hours)
It was great. I cheered, booed, and cursed real-time during the game for the first time all season. I called friends back home during big plays... it was awesome. At 2:30AM in the 4th quarter I couldn't stand it anymore (I'm hardly ever up past 10PM here) and I passed out.
Dec 5th is the SEC championship, Jan7th is the BCS game. I'm organizing for a good showing and with any luck my undefeated Gators will be there.
Go Gators.
*Update: Since this game my gators continued undefeated onto the SEC championship, but sadly lost to Alabama in the conference title game. However I'll now be cheering SEC against Texas Jan 7th ... Let's show why we're the best conference in the nation!
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