The SUV advanced between the dark and, on the sides of the dirt road, dozens of yellow lights that watched the passage of the vehicle were shone: they were implalas. The eyes of those antelopes stirred in the black weed until they gathered in terror before the nearby roar of the engine. He had so many hours of the back on the back that the bones had numb with the cold and the potholes of the road. I was about to get to the end of the world and it was a world emergency: my destination was a store of stores on the border of Botsuana and Namibia, where the internet connection was intermittent, being optimistic, and that night a Barça final was played Madrid. Horror.
I approached the driver, Wectie, and asked him what options he was to be able to see the game, which began in a few hours. He replied with a whistle and explained that the connection was regular if it did not rain or wind, just at the moment when a thunder cracked the sky and a ray illuminated some coal clouds. Neither joke.
When I settled in the store, an ocean fell from the sky and ran rivers of water through which my few options were diluted to see a few minutes from the final. As from time to time I entered a message on my phone, I asked the colleagues for mercy: “ID informing, please. I am in Namibia and I can’t see it and only watsaps enter. I ask you not to have me, for human charity. ”
The plea made sense. It is not the first time that a heartless colleague announces a 5-0 after a sad draw in the Getafe field.
That night, I lived the golet culé to the meringues from the darkness of my store, under the replacement of an inclement and happy rain every time a message that deepened in the white wound.
Another friend shared his happiness from the distance: “First part of dream, Xavi.”
During hundreds of trips through Africa, I have put the continent upside down to get the Barça match, it was like it. Getting it when it seemed impossible generated an unbridled satisfaction I already often had the feeling that the encounter began with 1-0 in my favor.
With the passage of time, I value failures more and more. A few days ago, I did not get in any way to see the nth winter from Barça to Madrid, and also in a final. Not so ago, it would have been a disaster. Not anymore, because in that cold store in the middle of a wildlife paradise, I found something more valuable: there was someone on the other side.
Sometimes they ask me why I like football and I think the answer is precisely there, in the games I could never see. Because I saw them through the messages of others, my friends.
Like Ernesto’s after Raphinha’s fifth: “5-1. Buah, ”he wrote. And he said everything.
#parties #Xavier #Aldekoa