We can remember it for you wholesale

So we are sitting at the Serena Hotel-Babu, Oscar and I- waiting for Marcel Desaily, Basile Boli and Christian Karembeu. We've been promised an interview with them and I figure this should be interesting-after all these are two world cup winners (Desaily and Karembeu) and a Champions League winner (Boli).However they are proving elusive to say the least. Lotto Rwanda-who brought them here- seem to be playing some kind of hide-the-football-stars game but they haven't even been kind enough to tell us the rules.
Wer'e fingering our PRESS badges impatiently-as contributing writers to 'Business Rwanda' we are only just discovering that you can put in thirty minutes of writing a week and still be considered a member of the press and it feels like having a skeleton key. We've been jerked around all morning and we are getting a bit sullen. THE NEW TIMES veers into view and the sports headline does not make for pleasant reading. JUST EX-FRENCH STARS COMING it says. Can you imagine the nerve of this newspaper? Three famous French footballers show up in Kigali and they start bitching that we didnt get more stars. The whiny tone aside, its still a pretty awful headline.
Lotto Rwanda aren't dont jerking us around just yet-now the interview has been pushed to later because the stars are heading to the stadium. We leap into one of their cars and get to the stadium in about 20 minutes. We stand outside for a while.
"Do we know who is playing?" I ask "Or what time?"
Nobody knows. We look around awkwardly wondering who to ask. The sky is beginning to grow dark and birds are wheeling around (Girlfriend: "What kind of geography is that Minega?") It's time to start writing. With great solemnity,I remove my notebook and pen and flip open to a blank page. I begin to think deep and profound thoughts about the sentence that will set the tone for the eventual article. With great ceremony I write the following sentence:
"We are the press, but we dont know what the fuck is going on."
****
When the match is over( Karembeu and Boli having made short substitute appearances for ATRACO and Mukura respectively) Desaily gets mobbed as he leaves his seat and dozens of excited fans are lining up to have their picture taken with him. As the last picture is taken and he begins to stroll away, one over-excited man jumps in and kisses him firmly on the cheek before vanishing into the crowd. Somehow I figure he didn't see that coming.
Amazingly it doesn't rain despite the fact that huge nimbus clouds has blotted out the sun for much of the afternoon. Babu figures the Lotto guys got in contact with a decent witch-doctor to ensure the launch goes according to schedule. He told us a funny story earlier: His former school was holding a big event to commemorate something or other and the centerpiece of this event was a giant mass. The event was slated to take place outdoors but some people were afraid the rain would 'get all up in the mix' as Babu would put it. They asked the school if they shared similar concerns.
"Oh dont worry about that" The school said "We've taken care of it"
The students were a bit mystified as to how the school had 'taken care' of the threat of rain (and were probably a little disturbed by the mafia-sounding undertones) but the answer came out soon enough. They had hired a witchdoctor to make sure the rain stayed away. Yes you read that right- they hired a witchdoctor to ensure that their Catholic mass went ahead smoothly.
Sometimes Africa's wonderful ironies just overwhelm you.
****
Eventually we talk to Basile Boli but he is in a bit of a rush and there's a large woman circling protectively around him clearly realizing that this fellow seems a tad important. He gives us the expected spiel about how wonderful it is to be in Rwanda and how open (HA!) the people all are. Then we leave him to his tea and the vulture. Talking to Karembeu proves a little more diificult but eventually he sits down to have a chat with us and he's a lot more interesting although a bit too intense- he doesn't smile until he tells us goodbye. He's a FIFA ambassador now and is also married to one of the world's finest women so I figure he doesn't cry himself to sleep at night. However thinking back to the game I wonder who would have predicted a World cup winner would end up on the pitch playing with ATRACO FC even if for only five minutes.
In the end we don't even get the chance to talk to Marcel Desaily. He's in a frightful rush and is possibly also terrified that another man might try to kiss him. He allows us to pose for pictures with him while he jabbers to someone else and then disappears into a fancy car. We wander off somewhere else and get ambushed by a few beers on our way home. All in all a good day's work.