SOUTH AFRICA TRIP DAY #2

Picked up at the airport by my generous hostess, Justine, we drove to her family home to drop off my bags. the airport was full of Brazilians and vuvuzela noise. The infrastructure in the country is quite good and the country quite clean. The golden hills remind me of LA. The freeway is lined with flags of all of the competitor countries hung on poles that went up days before today's opening match. The streets are also lined with men selling flags and vuvuzelas.

We drove downtown for a tour through a pleasant museum on the history of South African beer, including a lesson on sorghum beer drinking from a traditional drinking bowl off of which the massive Soccer City stadium that would host the game later is modeled. Our tour was led by a pleasant woman who begged out of drinking with us because she was pregnant.

HAKUNA MATATA: Then we went on to the highlight of the day - traditional Afrikaaner South African food and the opening match. The game was exciting, the local Bafana Bafana (Zulu for boys) squad nearly pulling off a huge upset against the Mexicans, who had a large fan contingent. Had some fun playing soccer at halftime with the local kids.

In South Africa, rugby is the white sport and soccer the black sport. Just as the legendary In Victus Sprinbok victory over the New Zealand All Blacks was envisioned as a transformative event in the country's racial history, so has support of Bafana Bafana been seen as a reciprocal effort to engage both the English and Afrikans community in the majority of the country's sporting passion. Though expectations for the team are obviously lower, the effort was a success - support amongst the people I watched the game with was high, and the team's fortune was the talk of the nation. Similarly, the event is meant not only to deliver a message that Africa has earned a respected place in the family of nations, but also within Africa, to hold up South Africa as a place searching for a sturdy multi-racial society amidst a continent whose ethnic disputes have rent apart its many fragile states.

OH....AFRICA: On to all anyone really cares about - the vuvuzelas. Obnoxious on TV, as I'll explain later, they add enormously to the spectator experience live. More to the point, they truly are everywhere - at the airport, as an alarm clock, walking down the road. To me, they are this World Cup's refrain...a running joke. At any quiet moment, suddenly a vuvuzela. In any social situation, vuvuzela. Always gets a laugh out of me. The price has inflated 10 times over. Already banned from Wimbledon. I saw Prince Harry on TV without one. Pity...I hope Biden or Clinton got one.

TIP ON WORLD CUP ATTENDANCE: Attend a host country game. I can't imagine how incredible the atmosphere must have been at the stadium, but it was fun enough just watching it with them on TV.

JUSTINE'S TIPS ON SOUTH AFRICA: The blacks have a series of hand signals for the routeless roving mini-buses that communicate which part of town they wish to go so that the mini-bus driver can figure out whether to pick them up or not. MAKE NO ATTEMPT TO LEARN THEM. You're more likely to inadvertently sign a grave insult. No need to get stabbed for accidentally telling the "SOULJAH" mini-bus driver that his "balls are hanging".