Cockroach Football

I had heard before coming here that Cameroon, like practically every country other than the States, was crazy about football, but when people told me that kids can turn anything into a soccer ball, I thought they were exaggerating.

How little I knew. A few weeks ago, I watched a small group of boys playing with nothing but a mango pit, and they seemed to be having the time of their lives, laughing as they ran back and forth, already expertly moving their feet even though they couldn't have been more than 12 years old.

I was impressed and pleasantly surprised by this display of imagination and improvisation, but nothing prepared me for cockroach football.

We were all gathered around the television watching one of the final games of the World Cup when a massive cockroach, perhaps as long as my index finger, scuttled by, an ambulant brown stain on the white tile floor.

Junior, the 17-year-old, approached, and I assumed that he would shoo the roach out of this world with a satisfying crunch, but he instead lightly kicked it in the direction of Giovanni, his 18-month old nephew. At this point, Junior's older brother Brice wanted in on the action, and the two of them carried on batting the insect back and forth with the baby between them.

In addition to my surprise at seeing this game unfold, I was slightly disgusted, as I am every time I encounter such a large specimen of a cockroach, but I'd learned not to react in front of my family: for them, such visitors are a common occurrence, and my disgust only amuses them. So I said nothing, and folded my legs up on the couch, but even this prompted amused comments like "Oh, she's scared!" followed by peals of laughter. The lesson? Sometimes, whether you're playing the game of life or cockroach soccer, you just can't win.