What pained me the most about our loss on the football pitch to the DRC on Saturday night was the fact that I had to wait out till Saturday night to actually write this column. See, I’d planned to say some very flattering things about the Amavubi boys in this space and of course this had been guided by the presumption on my side of an easy win for the Wasps. The news was devastating to say the very least, and journalists as usual did not make any attempts to find softer ways to deliver the bombshell: “It’s oooooooverrr at the Kigali stadium! DR Congo’s Leopards are through to the semi-final after a tough battle with Rwanda’s Amavubi. The game could’ve gone either way but DR Congo’s superior stamina gave them the edge during extra-time,” proclaimed a TV journo as he delivered a live feed of the bad news. I know why the DRC boys have “superior stamina” like the TV journo put it. The Congolese play most of their sports with vim and vigor because they know the benefits of winning a game. One of those benefits is the fact that if you’re a Congolese footballer and score a goal against a foreign opponent, your name will be turned into lyrics for a Lingala song and therefore immortalized. Of course soon you will be the talk of the town, a bonafide celeb. Remember the great Roger Milla from Cameroon? Ask your next Congolese friend what Congolese musicians did to his name from miles away. Another source of Congolese stamina is the food they eat. I once had a Congolese friend whose name, incidentally was Soca. In Soca’s world, “food” meant only ubugari bw’ibigori and that of myumbati. Soca would walk away in disgust and as a sign of protest whenever he came home and found I had cooked “useless” food like rice. To him, eating rice or chips “is like eating papers”. I will end today’s column prematurely because what is there to celebrate and go on and on about? Allow me end it on a note of English instruction because like you already know, I’m not just a music pro, but also an English language pro. That English lesson is that the DRC won the match but it did not win Rwanda. We win matches, not sovereign countries.
