Super Bowl

Even from my perch several thousand miles from home I am keenly aware that a great American tradition has passed this week; the Superbowl. The ultimate American day full of fatty foods, extreme consumerism, 3 million dollar advertisements and of course football. I had forgotten all about the superbowl (I haven’t seen or heard about football the whole time I’ve been here, unless of course you mean soccer) until a week or so ago I saw Facebook explode with the information that the Giants would be playing the Patriots this year. Being from Connecticut, I could only imagine how my fair state was reacting to the news. Without a team of our own people tend to latch on to any one of the many teams from the area when it comes to sports; New York, Boston. New Jersey.  The whole thing got me reminiscing about chicken wings, pizza, beer and watching the game mostly for the commercials. Last year, my roommates and I watched it on our comically small TV and attempted to order a Papa Johns pizza which literally never came and the phone lines were too busy to ever get through to complain. Ah America, how I miss you. (We got a free pizza the next day so it all worked out).

Despite my physical removal from it the Superbowl touches my life here in it’s own way. In what can either be seen as a great display of capitalist ingenuity or first world waste, after the two teams who will be playing in the Superbowl are announced T-shirts are printed for either possible outcome. So before the game is even played millions of shirts are printed declaring both the Giants and the Patriots as the champions of this year’s football season. Both are possibly true until the game is played and the outcome is decided., but then what?  What do you do with the shirts that are inevitably proven false? What do they do now, with the Patriots shirts? They send them to Africa of course where they flood the markets and are sold for 200 Rwf ( 20 cents ) and people with no idea what they mean parade around in them excited to have purchased a brand new shirt from America. As a result of this my whole village seems to think they are Colts fans due to their Superbowl win last year. I don’t have the heart to tell them the Colts lost, and American football is not the game they are thinking of.

            The whole thing makes me think of the multiple universe theory that when you make a big decision the universe splits and each outcome plays out in its own universe. Both are true.  And maybe in this case it is. In some reality out there the Patriots won this years Superbowl, and that universe is rural Africa. And when this years Tshirts arrive, I will wear mine with pride.