Simon’s Birthday and the Tanzania Premier League!
The following blog post is brought to you by Jordan.
This past week came with many great days and moments. In this blog I will tell you about this past Wednesday which happened to be Simon’s 20th birthday. The day started out with me and Caleb waking up earlier than usual to sneak down to the corner store to pick up a cake to celebrate Simon’s special day. Once the cake was acquired we had Jacob help sneak the cake into our classroom while Caleb and I distracted Simon. Our plan worked flawlessly and Simon had little suspicion about what was to come next.
Once we all gathered for our typical morning meeting with our Swahili teachers Simon knew something was up. He was asked to take a seat at the front of class looking back at the rest of us. Our teacher Israel then entered the classroom from behind Simon with what we all assumed to be a full bucket of water. He then proceeded to “dump” the contents of the bucket onto Simon revealing the fact that there was never any actual water inside, much to the disappointment of us spectators. After this prank we all sang happy birthday to Simon in both English and Swahili, and then enjoyed a delicious chocolate cake.
After the rest of our morning class was over we headed over to Adam and Karen’s apartment for lunch and more celebrations. We then all piled into a few bijajs (mototaxis) and headed off to watch a top flight futbol match in the Tanzania Premier League. The game was between top ranked Younga (Young Africans) FC and Kengold FC. Upon arrival at the stadium we were met with a local journalist who proceeded to interview each of us about our pregame predictions. Some of the group also split off to buy the local team’s jersey. We then made our way into the stadium for the much anticipated kickoff of the match.
The match was a great success for the home side, racking up two goals in the first ten minutes or so, which we made sure to celebrate as much as possible. The home team continued to dominate the match going into half time up by four goals to zero. Younga continued their goal fest in the second half with a goal after just one minute of play. But after their sixth goal their opponents finally found the back of the net with a surprise long range shot directly from kickoff. Ultimately the Younga won 6-1! The number of goals scored, and thus the amount of celebrating we did left us very tired and hungry. So to round out the great day we went out for one last celebratory meal for Simon’s birthday.
