crab sandwich

When it comes to organized events in Angola, perhaps it’s fitting that the Portuguese word for ‘wait’ is the same that’s used for ‘hope’ – esperar.

As in, “I hope this damn thing starts before I die of starvation / thirst / malaria / boredom.”

Hour #2 of waiting …

I actually started this here post two Saturdays ago¹, scribing a few thoughts on my iPod:

My ass is perched on a four inch ledge as I wait with my futsal teammates for some signal that our game will start … soon?

Whether it’s meeting times or game time, little happens when it’s supposed to in this country. Seeing the others kill the hours (?) with heated arguments of Ronaldo vs Messi and explain the situation with the catchphrase ‘It’s Angola!’, I had assumed the Angolans merrily just put up with it.

Not so. Many of them are just as annoyed as I am!

This all begs the question: why? If they get as frustrated as I do when we have to wait three hours—three HOURS—for there to be even a hint that a game might start, why do they put up with this shit?

Finally last night after the games started a measly two and a half hours late, it all started to make sense. I was told to arrive at 6pm for a 7pm kickoff. I showed up at 6:20pm, but should have known better. We waited until about 7:45pm for the president of the futsal association to show up. Apparently the games couldn’t start without him.

So maybe this all starts from the top down: the guys in charge exert their dominance / power / manhood by making all us plebs wait for hours and hours. And those that do the waiting, in turn, return the favor by showing up equally as tardy.

Yes, we’re frustrated, but unfortunately we can’t to anything about it.

And then to top things off, when we’re finally let onto the court, we often find it in this state:

Trash on the court.

Trash all over the place. And usually there’s a sizable stage somewhere on the playing surface. In this case, there was a banner that announced a celebration for one of the universities. Yay!

But did this so-called ‘president’ demand that whoever made the mess come down and clean it up? Did he get on the phone and bitch someone out? Nope. We just shrugged our shoulders, said a few curse words and did what had to be done: We gathered everyone around the stage and after the prez led a quick prayer asking for strength or something, on the count of três we picked up the stage, heaved it off the court and finally got the game started.

You can’t get too worked up about this sort of thing or you’ll go crazy. Every day is a lesson in patience.  Sometimes you cry, sometimes you laugh, sometimes you craugh.

I’ll never really understand it. “IT’S ANGOLA!”

Um … dois …