Laura Brown
Cup fever passes to Latin America in a blast of vuvuzelas, writes
TOWARDS the end of 2010, I travelled to Latin America for the first time. The world was still basking in the excitement of us hosting the Fifa World Cup, and any mention of my being from South Africa immediately opened doors for me.
It started as soon as I arrived. The immigration officer at Buenos Aires international airport smiled broadly when he saw my passport and said “Ah, World Cup. Welcome to Argentina.”
And everywhere I went in South America the same thing happened. I quickly learnt that in Spanish the word for World Cup is mundial, because that’s what people would say to me, and I would reply “Yes, yes, the mundial.”
Of the two most amusing, one was the 12-year-old son of a taxi driver in a tiny remote village in northern Argentina who just stared at me with his mouth wide open for the duration of the journey after I said I was from South Africa.
Only when we reached my destination did he recover his senses enough to ask: “Are you really from South Africa? Did you go to the World Cup?”
The other was a customs officer checking my bags at a land border crossing from Argentina into Chile. Upon hearing where I was from she wiggled her hips and sang Waka Waka, the official 2010 World Cup song by Shakira and South Africa’s own Freshlyground.
But it couldn’t last forever. I travelled to the same region again at the end of 2012, and nobody was interested in South Africa anymore. The days of Waka Waka and special treatment were over.
It was all about Brazil. The country of samba, carnival and a list of football greats that could go on for days had taken over and left us in the dust. Everybody expected the Cup in Brazil to be the biggest party ever.
Sadly for the South American nation, preparations have been marred by protests, delays, poor infrastructure and broken promises. The euphoria was not there.
One would almost have thought the World Cup was not about to happen and that the “Nao vai ter copa” (the cup’s not going to happen) slogans on social media were correct. That is until a few days ago.
The fever has finally arrived in Brazil. It came late, but it came and it is noisy.
On the eve of kickoff, the streets of Sao Paulo resounded to a cacophony of plastic horns.
And when I overheard a man in the supermarket asking his wife “Compramos vuvuzela?” (should we buy a vuvuzela?), I knew South Africa had truly left a mark on the world, and that 2010 would always be remembered. If not for anything else, for hosting a successful tournament and introducing the vuvuzela to the world.