Ons bloed is blou!

The hills of SA are alive with the sound of…rugby!

Yes, that's right…rugby.

Sports is very very important to folks round here…but it's like that just about anywhere you go. I mean it's either White Sox or Illini basketball or Manchester United or Oscar de la Hoya or whatever. South Africa is no different. The big sports here are rugby, cricket,and soccer. Like a lot of things in SA, even sports affinities are sort of drawn across racial lines. Traditionally whites tend tofollow rugby/cricket and blacks tend to follow soccer. Not sure about the other groups here (Indians, Coloreds). I'm guessing Indian folks are huge cricket fans though. British folks dig cricket. Afrikaaners dig rugby. These aren't hard and fast alliances...but more a rule of thumb.

As of Saturday, South Africa has made major history in rugby. See, there's this rugby tournament called the Super 14. I don't know how it might compare to the Superbowl in NFL...but I think it's sort ofsimilar. It's like the big one of rugby tournaments around here. The teams that compete in the Super 14 are from South Africa and Australia...and there might be some New Zealand teams in the mix there somewhere. This alone deserves a little explaining...SA and Australia are rivals. It's mostly a sports thing (Australia tends to kick SA's butt in a lot of sports) but there are finer nuances to it. Like the fact that a MAJOR portion of the (white) South African population has emigrated to Australia. Other people might add other nuances to the mix...but those are the ones that I've picked up on. It's always a good time to poke fun at how South Africans get whipped by Australians...it's bound to stir up some healthy cameraderie in the teasing department. As long as you aren't nasty about :) So it's a big deal that any SA team is in the finals...let alone that both teams are from SA and that the final game is going to be played here. I bite my thumb at you Australia. Also it doesn't hurt that Australia just won the Cricket World Cup (after SA made it to the semi-finals). This is causing a nice healthy dose of SA sports pride.

Okay...so the super 14. I'm not sure how long it's been going on...but as of this weekend the 1st ever South African team has made it to the final game. And not 1 SA team...but 2 have made it. So 2 SA teams will be playing one another in the final game of the Super 14 tournament for the 1st time in the history of the tournament. And the game is being hosted in SA...also a first. Not bad, not bad at all. Now...some more explanation. The two teams that are playing each other are HUGE rivals. The Sharks (from Durban/KwaZulu Natal) vs TheBlue Bulls (from Pretoria). It's like saying the Cubs vs WhiteSox...and, interestingly, inferences about the culture here can be drawn from this rivalry. Exactly in the same way that you can drawn conclusions about how Chicago works from looking at the sports rivalry between the Sox and the Cubs. Northside vs Southside. Yuppie whites vs working class minorities, etc. Has anyone at home seen that AWESOME commercial where the prototypical Cubbie fan (blond haired frat boy type) is at the tattoo parlor getting a tattoo on his back? He's talking to his friend on his cell phone and is like 'Yeah man I'm getting it done now...Cubbie blue...yeah!' When in fact the artist (big Latino dude) is tattooing a GIANT Sox emblem on his back. That ad killed me!!! Those ad execs earned their money on that one!!

Now some more background info for ya. I stay in Pretoria. It's like the Afrikaner homeland. Afrikaners are a group of white people here. There are basically 2 white people groups in SA: English and Afrikaners. I don't really get all the differences between the two groups (I'm here to learn stuff like this), but apparently there are some very striking differences. For many years there has been a pretty healthy rivalry going on between the 2 white tribes. Way back when there were Dutch people that landed in the Cape (Cape Town). 1652 is I think when Jan van Rieebeck (Dutch) first arrived in the Cape. Eventually the British also came to the Cape and started imposing rules. Rules which some of the Dutch folks living in the Cape were not cool with (like taxation and I think anti-slavery stuff). So a group of these Dutch people sort of rebeled and headed into the interior of South Africa. These people were called the voortrekkers and are the ancestors of the Afrikaans people. You can think of them like the pioneers in the USA. The voortrekkers eventually sort of settled in the area where Pretoria is and set up this republic called the Transvaal. There's actually a GIGANTIC monument to the voortrekkers here in Pretoria...but I've yet to see it. One day, one day. Then gold was discovered in the Transvaal (okay in the Witswaterstrand)...I think in the late 1800s. So, of course the British were trying to get a piece of that pie. Another big thing that is important to this old skool rivalry is this little event called the Anglo-Boer War...I think there was actually at least 2 A-B wars. I don't remember (forgive me Mr Nelson!). It happened in the early 1900s and was really really nasty. The British were super ruthless and put a lot of Afrikaners in concentration camps (SA is where the very first concentration camps ever were) as well as sending people off to other British colonies like Sri Lanka and stuff. Even sending little kids off to these foreign prison camps. And of course, tons of people died on either side of the conflict. So...the British and Afrikaners...well they got some beef that's pretty established in the history of this country. There are also cultural differences that seem to divide the groups. Like Afrikaners tend to be pretty conservative and religious and stuff. I equate Afrikaner culture w/small town American culture to an extent. But I'm still working on this hypothesis. British tend to be more liberal, etc. There's probably more...I just am not sure what these "things"are all about.

The Blue Bulls (actually it's Blou Bulls...Afrikaans, baby!) are the Pretoria team. They play like 5-6 blocks from my house at Loftus Stadium. (Wow...remember when stadiums in the USA weren't named after corporations????? Ohhh Old Comiskey...*sniff*) Game day here is NUTS! Blue Bull fans are really really hardcore. People with flags flying off their cars, helmets w/GIANT bull horns on them, tailgating, boozin', signs all over that say "Ons bloed is blou" (our blood is blue). Basically, it can be infered that there's a very strong Afrikaans vibe following the team.

The Sharks are from KwaZulu Natal (KZN)...specifically the city of Durban. KZN is a pretty British province in this country. Way back when SA wasn't exactly provincially united...KZN(known as Natal in those days) was a British protectorate. So it has a leftover British vibe going on. And a lot of British descendants live in that province. That is the province where I went to school back in 2002. I didn't know hardly any Afrikaners then. Actually I don't think I knew any. They just weren't really around. There are Afrikaners that live there...but it's a pretty staid British stronghold.

So these two teams are playing one another on Saturday. The first time a SA team has been in the finals...the first time 2 SA teams have been in the finals. The 2 most hardcore rivals in the country. Yeah...it's going to be NUTS around here. Just to give you an example...I own a Sharks jersey. Back when I was in KZN I met a cute boy who played rugby for a junior team of the Sharks. Basically he was on one of the teams the Sharks monitor for new players. A hot rugby player...how could I go wrong? So I got a Sharks jersey. I'm a huge rugby fan, if I can be said to be a sports fan at all, and getting a Sharks jersey was an obvious choice. When I wear the jersey around here I get tons of flak/attention for it (think wearing a Bears jersey in Northern Wisconsin...you just don't get away with that w/out a word or two). I actually used to wear the jersey on purpose when I first got here just so ANYONE would talk to me. It always works. If you want people to talk to you...wear the other team's jersey! Works every time. Except sometimes they just speak to you in Afrikaans...which is about the same as not being spoken to since I don't understand the language. There are also a lot of Sharks fans around here. I don't get that. I think it must be white people that have come up here from KZN to study or something. I haven't figured that anomaly out yet. So I either get tons of crap for wearing the jersey or "I like your jersey." Either way...people talk to me...and on some days that is enough to keep my spirits up a bit. Yeah so that's your little slice of SA history. Past and present.

I sort of pieced this info together from my random knowledge of SA...if I got something wrong...let me know!

I'm going home to go to bed now.
It's 'Day in the Life' today...so let's see those photos!

Much Love
Lynsee