I am the world's best soccer fan.

One thing all Peace Corps Volunteers strive to do is to become well integrated into their communities, or as we say here: “bien integré”.  As Cameroon has a huge soccer culture and is currently participating in the World Cup, I’ve decided that pretending to be a soccer fan would be an easy way to gain some integration points.

Let’s be real:  anyone who knows me well knows that I know next to nothing about sports.  I will gladly (okay, sometimes begrudgingly) sit next to you while you watch hockey or baseball and I'll occupy my mind by playing solitaire or knitting while you shout things at people on the screen who can’t hear a thing you’re saying and probably wouldn’t care about your opinion anyways… point is, I’ll sit there with you, but I wont follow what's going on and I’m beyond pretending to give a crap.

Despite all that, here in Cameroon, I’ve turned over a new leaf!  Errr… Kind of.

Last night was Cameroon’s first match in the World Cup (against Mexico).  I set off at 5PM decked out in my brand new Cameroon jersey (first sports jersey I’ve ever owned!) to head over to my counterparts house.

Neither Madame Tizi nor her husband were home, so I ended up watching the game with their five sons, ages ranging from 2 to 19.

I kept my mouth shut for most of the game, because when I said I didn’t understand what was going on, the boys thought it was because the channel was in French or that my eyes were too bad to see the ball.  Letting them think that was probably better than the reality: I really had no idea what the heck was going on.

I just want to preface this by saying that my youth soccer team won the U-10 tournament back in the day.  I was goalie.  The best goalie.  The goalie of the winning team!  The coach even made a point of keeping me in the net rather than putting me on forward or defense (because 1. I hated running, 2. I severely lacked coordination, and 3. I was the only girl on our team who would not do cartwheels or draw pictures in the dirt while attending the goal).  As champion goalie, I did at least manage to pick up the basic objective of the game: get the ball in the net without using your hands (unless you are the goalie, of course).

Anyways, here are some essential points about my experience pretending to be a soccer fan for the night:

• I did not make any comments about whose mascot could beat whose, as my mom and I would usually do.  I must admit, however, that this was partly because I didn’t know what Mexico’s mascot was (maybe a chihuahua?), and because lions could totally conquer anything.  Living proof:  Simba.
• I saw the ball go into the net several times, but the score never increased. I found this odd.
• At one point, I thought there were three balls, but then realized that one of the players had superbly bright white shoes.  He was the odd man out – most of the players had super awesome neon shoes that probably glow in the dark.
• The Mexican players fell down a lot.
• The Cameroonian players experiment with their hairdos a lot more than the Cameroonians in Sanguéré-Paul.
• For a while I had difficulty knowing who was trying to go in which direction, because the goalies were wearing blue and black and neither of those are Cameroonian colors.  Then it dawned upon me – the goalie in blue was African, while the goalie in black was Mexican.  Duhhh!  (This only took me about 20 minutes into the second half to figure out.  Why am I even admitting this to the whole internet world?)
• Mexico’s fans had way cooler paraphernalia than Cameroon -- sombreros!  They probably were having a lot more fun enjoying themselves with margaritas and shots of Jose Cuervo while the Cameroonian fans were drinking “33 Export” and sachets of Fighter (Sorry CamCam.  We do love your sachets, really we do, but...but... tequila!)
• It seemed to be raining on the audience a lot more than on the players.
• The TV channel did not use any of those confusing magical moving lines that ESPN usually puts on football fields.
• I was told that each half is 45 minutes, and I was really appreciative that they did not stop the clock during each foul or whatever you call it, but I was confused when the first half went to 47ish minutes and was kind of bummed when they tacked on an extra 4 minutes to the end just for funsies.
• Cameroonian soccer players have really nice butts.

That last point is probably the only reason I will continue to watch the World Cup this season.