The devil is in the details

When I was growing up in Uganda, there was one figure who seemed to stalk our every waking moments like a bad strain of flu that won't go away. I'm talking of course about Satan. There was hardly a phenomenon that wasn't in some way or other linked to the devil. When Ace of Base had that huge hit All that she wants the story soon spread that what they were singing about was a woman who sleeps around so she can get pregnant and sacrifice each baby to the devil. Then Ace of Base had another huge hit with 'The sign' and this too got the 'devil angle'- apparently the sign that was being sung about was the sign of the devil. And then we had the Macarena dance craze, but that quickly became a taboo because it was a song of devil worship ("You cant understand what they are saying!" was the somewhat baffling reasoning used here- Spanish speakers might have disagreed) and the dance itself was supposedly a ritual in which you were inadvartently offering yourself to Satan. We chldren were obviously a bit confused- if satan was so powerful, why on earth was he resorting to using Swedish pop bands and dodgy dance crazes to get a foothold in Uganda? Let's not forget we had grown up with the specter of the 'night dancers' who presumably used the cover of darkness to carry out some kind of satanic dance out in the open. How does one win over recruits like that? "Hey man, I'm meeting up with some friends around midnight and we are going to dance out in the open in the countryside. Oh yeah and wer'e dancing for Satan. Wanna come?"
I thought of all this the other day when I read an article in The monitor about signs of the occult. Could you unknowingly be a devil worshipper? was the subtext of the article and the answer was a gleeful YES FOOL! It featured an interview with Roger Mugisha who apparently was once a devil worshipper and used to visit one of his underwater kingdoms where he was offered riches beyond his wildest dreams but-if memory serves me right- he had to first offer eggs as a sacrifice before he got access. Man, I cant believe I'm actually writing that sentence! Anyway Mugisha noted that the Queen of Buganda had a ying-yang symbol on her dress and his conclusion was that she was in effect declaring herself a disciple of Lucifer. He went on to warn all of us that there were dozens of 'devil' signs out there and if we weren't careful, we might be allying ourself with Satan. The newspaper then helpfully enclosed a list of signs and hand signals that Satan had apparently copyrighted. It was like one of those frenzied health warnings ARE YOU AT RISK?
In my last post I warned all of you to look under the bed for colonialists but I forgot to add Satan. It's going to get crowded down there! The same questions that had occured to me in my pre-teen years occured to me then- if Satan is indeed banging around trying to get people into his camp, is he really making a good job of it? Is he sitting there thinking 'Now all I have to do is wait for someone to wear a dress with the ying yang symbol and then I'll be sorted- MWAAHAHA!" Surely as an evil genius, he's got a better plan than that?
And I really dont buy this whole 'Satan's underwater lair' shtick- it's just too James Bond-ish although it does have its own special African twist (the eggs)However I've always wondered about the 'night dancers'- was it just the Ugandan idea of a rave? If you ran into some guys dancing maniacally under the moonlight in England, you wouldn't bat an eyelid- you would simply assume it was a drug-fuelled rave (Or a Chelsea fan club reunion) Why don't we hear about them anymore? Not like they are completely off the radar. The other day I was reading one of those 'straight talk' colummns in which teenagers write in asking for advice about sex and love. A girl wrote in complaining that everytime she was around her male friend, his eyes became red and he started acting weird. "Is it because he is a night dancer?" She asked. Readers, I laughed until I wept. I'm not saying I knew any better when I was that age, but I laughed anyway.
On a completely different note, I'm watching SKY news right now and there is a baby race on. Yes, babies are crawling in a frenzy towards the finish line urged on by some adults who I can only assume have no day jobs.

The ghosts of unreason Part 2

Sometimes you come across stupidity so staggering that you are almost blinded by it. Your brain shrinks away from it and any prolonged exposure to it is like staring at a solar eclipse without those special glasses. You almost want to sit down and write poetry about it. You wonder if it should be stored in a museum and handled only by trained staff with special gloves so that one day thousands will make the pilgrimage and stand there in awe.
I'm talking of course about Gambia's increasingly unhinged president Yammeh (or something like that) He claims he can cure AIDS by rubbing paste on someone's body and he's given a few demonstrations- a creepy spectacle to put it mildly. Now this would ordinarily be almost amusing, but he's telling his patients to stop using retrovirals (you know, the ones which ACTUALLY WORK) while they are on his treatment and that becomes downright irresponsible and even criminal. The President also says he can tell someone's future just by looking into their eyes-something which should presumably come in handy when a coup plot is being hatched against him. Reminds me (slightly off topic) of an anecdote I read about some guy whose car got hit by another as the driver reversed out of the parking lot. The woman who caused the accident got out of the car and handed the guy her card- it read PSYCHIC.
Anyway if you ever need one more reason to despair about Africa, this man is it. Can you imagine such a deluded moron in a position of power? Can you imagine people actually believe him? I read with amusement and horror an editorial by the country's leading paper which called his AIDS 'cure' 'The greatest invention in modern history.' Even satire can only stand there wringing its hands helplessly. Where do you start? And of course he has refused to have this scientifically verified because it is obviously self-evident. He says he can cure AIDS so what more proof do you want?
Africa has also been sticking out its middle finger to those dastardly colonialists (They are everywhere- have you looked under the bed?) Recently there was what amounted to a vote of confidence for Mugabe when Zimbabwe was given control of a major UN environmental body just so that African governments could show they were 'independent' and wouldnt take any shit from people unless they were as black as they were. Well done guys! Want a cookie and a hug? While you are at it, can you let us know if you have more idiotic ideas in the pipeline? Please let us know in advance so we can prepare ourselves. "The environment has nothing to do with politics" one of the men in question said sniffily. I guess then you wouldnt have minded giving the post to, say, Apartheid South Africa? Yes, didnt think so.
Moving on to stupidity on a more minor scale, I'd like to write briefly about the Champions League final. I love Rafa Benitez but starting with Bolo Zenden was one of the worst decisions any coach has ever made. Moreover keeping a 4-5-1 thirty minutes after going a goal down was also fairly idiotic as was bringing on a rightback-an inferior one at that- with Liverpool still chasing the game. I was pretty gutted about the result especially because we dominated the game but that's life. Watching Pippo Inzaghi at work, I remembered that funny quote by a coach who said that he was born offside.
And in the Middle East we have the now almost mundane sight of Israel and Hamas at war. What really intrigues me about this particular battle is the fact that Hamas was already at war with Fatah- their fellow Palestinians. Not content with fighting on only one front, they then started lobbying rockets into Israel. Yes in the midst of a civil war with Fatah, they started taking on Israel! The mind boggles. I think there should be a Violence Anonymous sort of thing so we could have Hamas stand up and say:
"Hello everyone my name is Hamas ('hi Hamas!) and I'm addicted to violence..."

Reading: The world is flat by Thomas Friedman about how globalization and technology are making the world 'flat'. It's pretty interesting although Friedman is occasionally annoying (The comparisons with Columbus in the first chapter) I'd recommend it to anyone who is interested in just how far technology and innovation are linking nations together- for example I had no clue that about half-a million Americans actually get their tax returns sorted from India because much of this work is simply outsourced from America and sent there.

Thinking in herds

"I don't dig white chicks" My friend announced gravely.
I turned around and looked at him warily. For starters I had been unaware that my friend was racist but I was even more surprised to discover that he had some sort of standards when it came to women. I was also quite disturbed by his use of the word 'chicks'- I had assumed it had been buried in the late nineties in an unmarked grave but now here it was rearing its ugly head in a conversation that was-to say the least- quite an ambush.
What had prompted his remark had been spotting Sunny and I talking to a group of girls from England. We were at Kigali nite at the worst party any of us had ever attended ("I've been to better funerals" Sunny announced cheerfully- I was afraid to ask for details)and we had ended up talking to this group of girls who had come all the way from England to deal with disabled kids.
"You do know we were just making conversation right?" I told him "And besides what's your problem with them exactly?"
"Man, haven't you seen Roots?" He asked.
I had indeed watched Roots but evidently there were lessons I had missed "So what lessons does Roots hold for us here?" I asked "That white women are evil?" I was in a smart-ass mood mainly because I was not drinking as a result of an epic hangover the day before.
He made a sort of strangled sound and reached for his beer.
But I pressed on "Haven't you heard Martin Luther King's 'I have a dream' speech?" I asked "I think that's a lot more relevant here. Or are you saying that Martin Luther King was full of shit? If so, please make you position clear now"
He made another strangled sound sounding a bit exasperated and said something that was instantly forgotten by the two of us. I sat back satisfied that I had done something vital for race relations. Surely my kudos would not be long in arriving?
***
"I think Steve wants to fuck me" Sunny announced seriously.
Needless to say this sentence caught our attention. The laughing started in a matter of seconds. One or two people choked on their drinks.
Sunny's theory was based on the somewhat dubious behaviour of a friend of ours. Apparently he had undermined just about every relationship Sunny had been in- 'stabbing me in the back' as Sunny put it crossly. One incident in particular which I can't go into right now had become almost legendary in our group. This is why he had reached this somewhat surprising conclusion.
"Maybe I should give him some booty so he can leave my relationships alone in the future" He countinued. We all laughed at the Brokeback mountain angle. Sunny was on a roll as indeed he had been earlier with our new-found English friends.
***
"We are getting old" My friend says earnestly looking a bit drunk "You know that? Have you been thinking about it? None of us are young anymore"
***
"Man staying sober is a hustle" My friend announced gravely.
We were at MTN- a place which was once the heartbeat of Kigali but which is now a lot less vibrant. The friend in question was the same one who had earlier announced that Roots had put him off white women. However his latest announcement was spot-on- staying sober was indeed a hustle.
We'd been out drinking the previous night and our hangovers had been so intense that we had sworn off alcohol for the next few days. I had drank nothing but sodas for the first few hours until a friend forcibly got me a drink and then the trend continued. Sitting at the counter later nursing my coke, someone had popped by and emptied about a third of a Uganda waragi bottle into my glass before dancing away gleefully. The same thing had happened to my friend a few seconds later. No matter where you turned, someone was trying their dammnest to steer you away from sobriety.
Sunny had recently found God and as a result had sworn off drinking (conveniently skipping the part in the bible where Jesus not only turns water into wine but passes the contents around the table for everyone to have their share) but sobriety was not being kind to him. He talked as if he was suffering from Tourettes syndrome- he just said the first thing that came into his head and it was rarely the appropriate thing. At one point he had asked the English girls how to make the sign for 'fuck you' in sign language. Now honestly- in what context would it be appropriate to tell a deaf person this? Fred had instantly stuck out his middle finger "It's universal!" He announced laughing.
So we sat there at the counter shaking our heads. All we wanted to do was drink a coke. Where was all this alcohol coming from?
***
Those two days over the weekend had been the exception- I spend most of my days home reading and listening to radio. I've found plenty of things to chew over mainly on radio. Where else can you hear a woman solemnly declare that "When love and the economy mix, there is a big problem?" (Radio Sirus) and where else can you hear the following conversation (This was Radio 10)
Reporter: Do you accept the second goal?"
Coach: I don't accept the second goal but he accepted it so we have to accept it but I don't accept it at all"
And I hope Radio Sirus can explain their use of music during a critical point of their relationship advice show. As the woman announced that "We are here to help you improve your relationship and love better" the song in the background was a certain Ying Yang Twins hit. At the very moment she made this annoucement, one could clearly hear the words "Wait till you see my..." Subliminal advertising?
Most bizzare sentence of the week is courtesy of Harry Sagara of The monitor "Why do Ugandans relish in building anthills out of moles?" No I don't think anyone is doing that Sagara- not even metaphorically.

The ghosts of Unreason

In one of my older posts I ended up talking about Mao- the late and unlamented former leader of China- and calling him one of the vilest human beings to have walked the planet. I noticed later that someone had in effect defended him in the comments section arguing that any evaluation of a leader is necessarily subjective. In effect, one man's meat is another man's poison. "You say monster, I say martyr" kind of thing.
I don't buy this argument mainly because it reeks of the kind of pretentious post-modernism that goes around in circles wondering if there is such a thing as objective truth. It also reveals another worrying trend: mythologizing past presidents and becoming less harsh towards them once their crimes are softened by the mists of time. We forget and we start to point the blame at exaggeration, evil western imperialists and the like. Recently Timothy Kalyegira came out defending Amin in The Monitor arguing that he had challenged John Nagenda to name just 800 people that Amin had killed . I recall that Amnesty International noted that Amin killed about 400,000 people and if I have to choose between Amnesty International and a hack like Kalyegira, there is no contest.
But back to Mao, the person who left the comment made me wonder. By what stretch of the imagination can you analyze Mao's regime and decide that he was a decent bloke after all? How do you subjectively analyze the death of 40+ million people and their ruthless repression for decades? Was he asleep the whole time? Did they occur in a parallel universe? I honestly don't understand. Maybe we have people who go around saying things like "Sure Mao's policies directly or indirectly led to the death of millions of his own people but he loved kittens! And he loved to sit outside and watch the sun set. He was a poet at heart..."
How does one love or respect Mao? How does one ignore the excesses of the Cultural revolution? The forced famines? The laughable pipedream propaganda of the little red book? Infact when I read George Orwell's 1984 I couldn't believe how similar it was to life under Mao. As much as he claimed to love the people, his goal was nothing less than the mental and physical subjugation of the Chinese. Is it any wonder that the main point of the cultural revolution was to suppress all knowledge outside the Party rhetoric? Is it any wonder that he could intentionally starve millions of his people on a whim? And how delighted he must have been when his inane rent-a-quote musings became the bible for millions of people gleefully enslaving themselves to the nonsense of the little red book? I don't mean this post to be an attack on communism itself- that's the topic of another post- but there is little doubt that communism made this very posible. The best book about life under Mao is inevitably Wild swans by Jung Chang (who worshipped Mao until the scales fell from her eyes) She also recently wrote a biography on Mao expanding on what she wrote in that book but Wild Swans is the book that truly opens your eyes to the evils of Mao.
So how far will this 'subjective' evaluation of history's brutes take us? Will Hitler be rehabilitated as a guy who just got 'a little carried away'? Will Pol Pot become a pop icon and be used to advertise coca-cola? Once we give Mao even the smallest bit of respect thats the road we are heading to. I'll stand by what I said- Mao was a monster and I condemn what he stood for.

The sky isn't folding under you

The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer was once lying in a flowerbed one afternoon staring up to the sky. A friend stopped by and somewhat baffled, asked him "what are you doing here?" "Exactly!" Schopenhauer replied brightening up at the prospect of intelligent conversation "What are we doing here?"
What we are 'doing here' is a debate we've all had at some time or other (usually under the influence of alcohol) but I had an interesting debate about it with my friend Thomas when I was still at uni. I was reminded of this when I got an email from him telling me about his travails in trying to turn the English to the bible. I met Thomas quite by chance once day in the Uni cafeteria. I had been approached by two guys with leaflets who wanted to know if I was a Christian and if I had a few minutes so spare. We sat in the cafeteria and we talked for a few minutes and then they had to leave. As I stood outside getting ready to go back to the hall I was approached by two other guys.
"I'm sorry we couldn't help overhearing your conversation in the cafeteria" One said "We were sitting next to your table. Do you mind if we talk to you for a few minutes?" So back in we went.
They started asking me what bible the other guys had tried to offer me. "Was it the recovery version?" Thomas-for that was his name- asked "Some people are leading others astray because they follow a wrong version of the bible"
I listened with growing interest- warring bible factions! This was getting exciting. It was like The matrix but with bibles. With this in mind it became a bit difficult to take things seriously but we did become friends afterwards. I did find it a bit amusing that there were groups of Christians going around campus undermining the other Christian groups.
In an unrelated development I recently read Eleven minutes by Paulo Coelho which I absolutely hated. However I still made it all the way to the end because I hate leaving books half-read even awful books like this one. It's one of those books which-as Mark Twain said- once you put it down, you can't pick it up. However the back of the book did offer some amusement. It purported to show the predicament of our heroine Maria (who leaves Brazil for Swirtzeland and ends up working as a prostitute in a high-class bar) It seems she has to choose between sex for the pleasure of sex itself (referred to here as 'the path of darkness') and sex in the context of love. What a dilemma! She has to choose between sex and...erm, sex! My heart bleeds for her- I think we can all agree that it isn't an easy decision to make.
Anyway up next I plan to read A clockwork Orange in French which should be a weird experience. It's called Orange mecanique which at least is a direct translation. Usually the French get cheeky when translating the titles of English films and for some reason often turn the title into a question. Thus Airplane becomes Y'a-t-il un pilote dans l'avion? (is there a pilot in this plane?)sometimes they just want aim for maximum obviousness so Home alone becomes maman, J'ai rate l'avion (mum, I missed the plane)
Anyway I went for a football game at the stadium the other day. It was the biggest game on Rwanda's football calendar- Rayon Sport vs APR. I got the cheapest seats possible partly because I'm stingy but mainly because I wanted to stand with the real vocal fans- the ones with the flags and the whistles and the ones who were doing the singing. The atmosphere was electric and I was deaf within the first ten minutes. I was amused by the use of mini-umbrellas as a kind of hat worn around the head with a strap that goes around your forehead- a good idea because it threatened to rain all afternoon. However I was more intrigued by the chanting and how something which sounds catchy and appropriate as a football chant in Kinyarwanda is instantly rendered rather less so in English. For example when the referee controversially allowed an APR goal to stand, the fans behind me started singing and this is what they sang:
FERWAFA
this is a problem
and it concerns you
Now obviously in English it doesn't sound like a conventional football chant but it was catchy as hell in Kinyarwanda and I was singing it on my way back home. The rest of the chants were more ordinary- "we are fed up" and "the referee is an idiot" were two crowd favourites. APR won the game 3-1 but by the time the second half started, the sky above my head was thick with thousands of bugs attracted by the giant stadium lights. It was a vertitable insect utopia as buterflies, grasshoppers, moths and God knows what else engaged in a merry dance- so thick above our heads that they blotted out the night sky. When we left the game, there were so many fans on the road that you could only move at a shuffling pace. I felt strangely elated caught up in this human traffic. Even the Rayon fans were in good spirits despite the walloping they had received.
Random thoughts:
-Apparently Uganda is going to plant a forest and name it after Queen Elizabeth. How does that work? She pops by for a few days and she gets a bloody forest named after her? However I suspect the forest will have more charisma than her majesty. Harsh but fair.
-It is so good to have the BBC world service on FM. I couldn't get it in Arusha which was very frustrating but now it's my night-time companion again. How I wish I could also get Five live...
-My friend Leo believes marriage and relationships are the means by which women secretly control the world and it is the duty of every man to cheat as much as possible. Not exactly a common position for a guy doing a degree in pure maths at Uni.

Mobutu and remote-control politics

A few posts ago I criticized a magazine called New African for a hilariously misguided article about the 'African brain'. However that was not the only piece in that edition that raised my wrath (coupled with the kind of morbid amusement you usually get when you see your parents try to dance) I cannot remember the title of the piece but it was a review of the memoirs of Larry Devlin. Devlin was the CIA's point-man in Congo in the sixties and seventies and the man who was charged with assasinating Patrice Lumumba (astonishingly enough the order came from President Eisenhower himself). He didn't do it in the end, but it was not because of any moral scruples. Lumumba's fellow Congolese proved a lot more enthusiastic than the American government in this regard.
My problem with the article was...well, the whole thing actually. The only way I can think of describing it is a kind of grassy knoll for idiots taking pot-shots at reality. The main gist was that Devlin's memoirs proved that the Americans controlled Mobutu by 'remote control'. He offers a few examples from the book but none of them really prove his point and most of the article is just a rant about how the white man has screwed up Congo. Mobutu it seems was nothing more than a puppet- the really evil people here were the Americans who propped up his regime and-according to the article- basically destroyed Congo.
Sadly such escapist views have little connection to what actually happened. In her fascinating book In the footsteps of Mr Kurtz (possibly the most readable book ever written about Africa)Michaela Wrong shows that it was actually the other way round. There is ample evidence that the US and the IMF were the ones actually dancing to Mobutu's tune. The Americans needed him as a bulwark against a potential Soviet takeover of the region (and mainly to get their hands dirty trying to keep them out of Angola)while the IMF were simply too spineless to cut him adrift and also no doubt looking forward to the money he would have to pay back. In one of the most remarkable tales of this unholy trifecta, Wrong reveals that Mobutu was once so displeased with the IMF that he cut off all relations with them and only a high-level delegation dispatched to Congo managed to make him change his mind- "an undignified sight" as Wrong puts it with considerable understatement. For the IMF to come grovelling to a third-rate dictator is something that defies words.
In another incident that highlighted exactly who was calling the shots in this relationship, he expelled all American officials in the seventies accusing them of trying to overthrow his government. They were eventually allowed back, but such actions were hardly those of a puppet. Wrong has a few of these stories and underlying them is a mixture of horror and disbelief that this man was allowed free rein. Unlike our friend from the magazine she also understands the difference between influence (which evidently run both ways) and the so-called 'remote controlled politics' which supposedly governed Congo.
New African as a whole seems to operate on the principles of this article- "Africans did nothing, it was all the white man's fault and still is!" Such posturing is intellectually dishonest and plain baloney. By ludicrously trying to paint Mobutu as a victim like the rest of his country, the magazine hardly begs to be taken seriously.
Meanwhile I strongly recommend In the foosteps of Mr Kurtz- so good I re-read it recently.

What separates us from the weasels?

I've been in Kigali for more than a week now and the News bulletin always amazes me. I'd noticed this before but it only really sunk in a few days ago. If you didn't know any better, you would think this is the most boring country on earth. Of course this can be a good thing because crime here is pretty low but still....
You see there is always only one thing on the news and that's another mind-numbingly dull conference on something or other. Seriously until you get to International news all you get are a group of serious looking people taking notes and staring pensively over their mineral water bottles. Caught in their more unguarded moments, they look pretty pissed off and as well they should be. The other day there was a big conference in which those involved came to the conclusion that they needed X amount of francs to combat poverty in a certain region of the country. Surely the money involved in setting up the conference- transportation, lodging, food, drinks, etc- would have been a pretty good start towards fighting poverty? In between the three news bulletins, we get riveting (cough cough) programmes chronicling the rise of pig feeding in the countryside or how sugar production has been tied into the nation's overall production goals. TV Rwanda is watchable during the day but virtually unbearable at night until they switch back to CNN at midnight.
Anyhow I've been thinking of Judas Iscariot lately thanks to a conversation I had with Raymond a few days ago. I was telling Ray about the discovery of the gospel of Judas a few months ago- a discovery which paints Judas in a much better light than the bible does. The newly-discovered gospels suggest that not only was Judas Jesus's favourite disciple privy to most of his secrets but that he actually betrayed Jesus on the explicit orders of Christ himself. Imagine trying to break that news to the rest of the disciples:
Judas: Now guys, don't freak out but Jesus has asked me to betray him. He will be whipped, tortured and crucified, but that's what he wants so don't stand in his way. I hope this doesn't change your opinion of me or affect our friendship in any way.
Disciples: Get him!
Nothing is making sense anymore. First we are being asked to reasses the commonly held image of Queen Cleopatra (turns out she was probably quite ugly) and now Judas just might have been the good guy? I guess Christianity might have turned out a bit differently if Jesus had died quietly of natural causes in his sleep.
Meanwhile here are excerpts of a conversation I heard on BBC's 'Focus on Africa' a few days ago. It stands as possibly the most disturbing radio moment of the year. The host of the show was grilling a man who run a nudist resort in South Africa that banned black people from entering.
Presenter: But isn't that racist?
Mad white man: No it's not- we just decided we don't want them here.
Presenter: Are you perhaps afraid of the size of their...
Mad white man: No, no no- thats just a stereotype! Black men do not have bigger penises than white men. That's a lie- I've seen many of them.
Presenter: But then why would you keep them out?
Mad white man: Because everytime they come here and see the white women they get errections! We cannot allow that, they are too indiscplined....

Random thoughts:
-Don't you need to have mental issues to even contemplate entering Big Brother Africa? Seriously what kind of thought process culminates in you sending off that form?
-There is a Radio station that baffles me. Late at night-if you tune in around midnight- all you hear is a woman quietly repeating in French "Mary, blessed are you among women and loved by God. Be with us in our moment of need..." and on and on in that vein before starting again. I'm going to call it Insomnia FM. Bonus points for blasphemy.
-Insensitive headline of the week from The New Times: KQ CRASH: NO RWANDANS ON BOARD. Well as long as there are no Rwandans on the plane I guess it's alright then eh?
-What kind of DJ plays Akon's song 'I wanna fuck you' at 7 in the evening?
-The Premiership has come to a close which is a real pity for those of us whose lives become a lot more interesting on Saturday afternoons. I wanted to write a roundup of the season but I got a bit lazy so I'll start it off by presenting my team of the season and follow it up in my next post:
Cech (Chelsea)
Carvalho (Chelsea)
Vidic (Man U)
Lescott (Everton)
Finnan (Liverpool)
Essien (Chelsea)
Fabregas (Arsenal)
Pedersen (Blackburn)
Ronaldo (Man U)
Drogba (Chelsea)
Berbatov (Tottenham)
Subs: Friedel (Blackburn) Agger (Liverpool) Chimbonda (Tottenham) Barry (Villa) Scholes (Man U) Arteta (Everton) Mccarthy (Blackburn)