African unity

I watched the Uruguay/Ghana game last night at a fan zone. (Uruguay won in penalty kicks after the most exciting and nail-biting game I’ve seen.) It was the largest and loudest crowd I’d seen at this fan zone, and after the game the crowd was universally deflated whereas before there had always been a third of the crowd that was happy, a third that was sad, and the rest that were ambivalent and had just come to watch.

Lots of people moved their work to the canteen to watch the Brazil/Netherlands game on Friday afternoon

I totally underestimated the desire of all of Africa (as measured by SA, at least) to see Ghana get through. The Ghanian flags were everywhere, SAs were crying afterward, etc. It was pretty neat to see that.

I think it says a lot about how Africa views this World Cup. Yes, SA is the host, but to some degree it is seen as the “debutante ball” for all of Africa.