World Cup in Kenya

So the World Cup is over now - the Kenyans have been watching it, though maybe not avidly. The local media has of course been disappointed that no African teams did very well (the Kenyan team is not particularly good and has never participated in a World Cup). Football is probably the most popular sport in Kenya, though the Kenyan National team do better at some other sports, including Rugby, as well as athletics of course. Most Kenyans support a Premier League club, and there is not much interest in the other leagues (though of course some interest in some of the other superstars around the World)

Certainly it has been on all the TVs in all the restaurants and bars (it is very common for restaurants to have TVs, especially local joints, though usually showing the news). Even our local vegetable street stall downstairs had it on the TV (they have a few other light bulbs in their tent too); I can't recall them having a TV before the World Cup, but maybe they did. It was also easy to watch the World Cup online, as the main mobile phone company had a deal with one of the broadcasters which made it quite affordable to watch in on one's phone (many matches were also on the state broadcaster, as well as on the expensive satellite station).

I think most Kenyan men especially like going to one of the many many bars around town, some small joints along the street in tents or small buildings; others larger in former houses now converted or in shopping malls and other buildings. The World Cup was as good a reason as any to get our more, and the timing was very good (the same time zone as Moscow). 

In general it seemed they liked to support the underdogs, and not one team in particular, and most days the scores of the night before would take up a small part of the front page with further reporting inside, though of course the larger and more important matches took over most of the front pages.

Towards the end of the competition some MPs took a selfie of themselves watching a game. The problem is they were actually in the stadium in Russia watching it, using taxpayers money to study how to organize large-scale events. This became a big storm in the media who enjoyed adding up how much the trip would have cost including their daily allowances, the hotels, flights, match tickets etc. The trip was officially approved (at least for some of them), so they didn't do anything wrong; it is just what happens...They would, it was promised, write a report to parliament on what they had learnt. 

The media of course pointed out that it didn't need a dozen people to go, they didn't need to book their flights last minute (which were expensive), they didn't need to attend such expensive matches, and of course, Kenya is very unlikely to ever host such a large sporting competition ever. It even had the regional African Nations Championships tournament given to Morocco instead recently as stadiums weren't yet ready (this is not even the more prestigious, more well-known African Cup of Nations; the 16 teams playing in the African Nations Championships are only allowed to field players who play in Kenya, not players who play overseas). I don't know how much the MPs really studied the logistics, operations, maintenance, construction, media, sponsorship and other important aspects of the competition that might be useful, but we'll have to see if the report is every made public!