Iraque and I spend many a Sunday afternoon watching Chidenguele’s semi-professional football (soccer) team take the sandy field in town. Unfortunately there are no fried candy bars or elephant ears. Just a lot of booze, cheer and, my favorite past-time, people watching.
Well Iraque, as a true football lover, intently watches the games and shrugs off any of my ill-informed comments about who on the team is cute, who looks like an old man, who runs funny, etc.
As I learned during world cup, one or two goals in 90 minutes just doesn’t do it for me. So, instead of watching the ball interminably bounce back and forth, from head, to foot, to hand, oops penalty, yelling, kick, out of bounds…. I get a load of the locals. I can’t help it.
The seating is like that at any small high school grandstand. So in fact not very grand. I am going to call it a mid-sized stand. It’s basically cement stairs which serve as seats, about 8 steps high and stretching the length of the football field, with a few large tin panels above for shade/rain cover.
In this mid-sized stand, there is the inevitable grand-stand effect. You know, the awkward, walk in front of the grandstand and try to look like you don’t care and don’t really see anyone. We have all done it. I did it many a time at HS basketball games. And let’s be honest, in the end, in trying to look like you don’t even care, you really just look like a too cool for school asshole.
In Jr. High we used to go to the Banks High School football games. In a small farm-town, football is big-timing (even if the team wasn’t very good), so it was a veritable who’s who of cute boys and popular girls. So of course, we would make our rounds on the track, making sure to strut our what I now realize to be awkward teenager stuff past the masses of onlookers (who, let’s be honest, probably didn’t pay much attention to the gap-toothed thirteen year old girl in her prized Tommy Hilfiger t-shirt).
So by watching the walkers and reading the ruckus, I have begun judgmentally stereotyping and categorizing the locals. Forgive me.
There are the die-hard fans. Those are the horn blowers, drum beaters and general booty shakers. You know the background hum you heard on TV when you watched any World Cup match? Well imagine that right in your ear. And it isn’t a hum. It’s like a dying trumpet that makes you leap out of your seat anytime anyone blows it. At least all the gymnastic leaping keeps me on my toes, somewhat aware of the game, and stops me from drifting off into a people watching oblivion.
Then there are the metro-sexuals. Do people still use that term? What makes a Mozambican metro-sexual? Big, tin (not real metal), embossed, eagle or flag or animal adorned belt buckles are involved. Jeans that may or may not be acid washed. Some fake leather, pointy, often white, perhaps cowboy boot inspired dress shoes. A button down that I personally think should be more thoroughly buttoned, or perhaps t-shirt that is tucked in. Usually the whole get-up is topped off with some badass aviators or other fake-chic sunglasses. But Caitlin, metro-sexual referred to a straight man with fashion instinct and a tad of feminine sensitivity. Well according to Mozambique’s unspoken fashion credo,” go cheap, go gaudy,” these men are chique de matar (dressed to kill). Also, what the above definition doesn’t account for is the schmoozer vibe. And these moz men are rocking their socks, and schmoozing the heck out of all the little ladies with their big buckles and their unbuttoned buttons.
Of course, thanks to the influence of American rap music, there are the wanna-be gangsters. These are the boys that giant plastic chains with dangling 50 Cent logos around their necks, and when you introduce yourself they tell you their name actually is 50 Cent. As my mom used to say during the baggy pant trend, “You can see their panties!”
Don’t forget the hoocher-coochers. These are the pretty little ladies in their discoteca gear, ie synthetic, super sequined, skank-tanks with leggings. Every time their team plays well, scores, or they are just feeling randy, they start workin their synthetically clad booties like hookers only wish they could. I am actually kind of jealous of the booty roll/bounce/shake moves they have on them. Although I just related these women to hookers, I should inject that hoochie in Mozambique is different than hoochie in America. A teeny, gaudy, shirt/dress with leggings, although semi-scandalous in rural Mozambique, doesn’t compare to the minis and heels that I have seen many a time at Thirsty Thursday baseball games. Nothing like 2 dollar drafts to get the 20-somethings out in masses. Note to Obama: sell cheap beer at the polls on election day. I guarantee minimum 99.7% turnout from the youngster crew.
And oh list goes on, with the big beer belly dadies, and the baby-backed mammas. The drunken yellers and the quiet watchers. And then, the largest group of all… the little ones.
As I have said many times, Mozambique is swarming with children. It makes sense, considering that half the population is under the age of 18. On a Sunday afternoon at the football field, all the babies come out. The fat little one in the white christening dress and hot pink underwear was my favorite last week. That, or the group of three Shakira impersonators doing their own rendition of Waka Waka, complete with a complex pelvic thrust/booty shake number. Most of the others just run back and forth in front of the mid-sized stand, skipping and jumping and playing and staring at people as they gleefully run amuck.
And in the end, Chidenguele usually wins and a nice little Sunday comes to a close with a cold coke. Really, all that’s lacking is a big fat bratwurst and some cotton candy.
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