An Admission of Wrong
Every time I’m accused of assuming that my opinion is right, my primordial instinct is to deny the accusation forcefully. I realize, of course, that I am guilty of occasionally believing that my position on an issue should be the position. But come on, who isn’t guilty of such an(at least occasional) assumption of correctness? There’s something irksome and depressing about being wrong and, although I know being wrong avails me of new vistas of learning, there are times when it just doesn’t feel good. I remember the feeling; I felt it just two nights ago.
Cameroon’s Indomitable Lionesses faced Nigeria’s Super Falcons in a semi-final football game during the 2018 Africa Women’s Cup of Nations. It was a high intensity game. Stakes were high. Tackles abounded. Managers remonstrated. There was a ticket to the AWCON finals to be won. As if that wasn’t motivation enough, another entry ticket — to the World Cup — sat at the finish line of the would-be victors’ victory lap.
I sat at the dining table, reviewing an article on my laptop and catching glimpses of the game when the French commentator’s high-pitched anticipation of a goal wooed my attention. For some reason, the high intensity of the game failed to command enough of my interest. It was strange, especially seeing as I’m usually so intent on watching Cameroonian women’s football that that resolve had cost me my first smart phone. And — I have to say — I loved my first smartphone quite alright. But that’s a story for another time.
So, the game struggled to grasp my attention.
Until it did.
As the goalless second half drew to a close, the French commentator indicated that the game would proceed directly to a penalty shoot-out. As soon as I heard that, something snapped in my head. I’m not sure how much of a feminist lives in me, but I felt that the cancellation of extra time for the women’s competition was surely an indictment of the football confederation’s gender bias. How could this be happening on a continental stage? Surely someone somewhere should’ve realized that such a discriminatory change of rules went beyond that uncertain realm of inappropriateness, and proceeded firmly into that territory one can only think of as out-and-out wrongness. So the competition rule makers had rested both countries’ hopes on the lottery of a penalty shoot-out, without affording them the customary benefit of extra time.
A wave of disbelieving embarrassment washed over my consciousness. Why did these things only happen in Africa? How could anyone be wrong in criticizing CAF? These are the same teams that compete in the FIFA Women’s World Cup. Had anyone complained during the World Cup that they couldn’t carry on to extra time? Yet, some board members — bigots that they are — had just decidedly scrapped extra time for an elite African women’s competition. Patriarchal blokes! All of them.
Now I was getting mad.
Back at the studio of the Cameroonian TV channel that was broadcasting the game, the TV presenters and football analysts seemed genuinely hopeful that the Lionesses stood a chance. They figured the Cameroonian team’s domination during the (then just-ended) second-half, signaled a possible shift in the historical balance of power between the two teams. With any luck, they hoped, the Lionesses would play better through passes, provide more accurate cut-backs, and take at least some of their chances.
I shook my head, indignant. These four professionals couldn’t all have missed it, could they?
Two of the studio panelists were women. Surely, they knew about the new rule. Or, at the very least, they had — like me — heard the commentator indicate the new rule.
I waited. Nothing!
As the panelists blundered on, images from the field filled the screen. Players and technical crews labored to relax tired muscles. Bottles of fluid sought to re-hydrate dehydrated bodies. Team captains attempted to reinvigorate exhausted wills. Coaches delivered galvanizing team talks.
Still, I waited.
The guys in the studio hadn’t noticed their mistake. I was shocked! Had they not listened to the commentator indicate that a penalty shoot-out would immediately proceed? There they were, embarrassing themselves on live television with talk about the Lionesses’ need to deliver better through-balls and last passes during the forth-coming thirty minutes. I secretly hoped that this channel’s signals were bound by national boundaries; we couldn’t be seen by viewers in other countries as the clowns we are.
During the five or so minutes during which the players readied themselves for the shoot-out, my ire at the TV presenters and football analysts rose like a peacock’s plumage. This had happened all too often. It was inconceivable that Cameroonian TV presenters were misfiring on internationally-broadcast live TV. How could such professionals suffer the unflattering misfortune of so badly fluffing their lines?
Then it occurred to me that the guys on local TV had probably not done their homework. Their ignorance of the rules of a competition they were covering advertised an embarrassing level of amateurish unpreparedness. I became surprised at my initial surprise. Was this not, after all, the stuff of which the Cameroonian version of professionalism was made? If anything, they were just faithfully enacting the national culture of ill-preparedness and neglect of duty.
Then the referee blew her whistle.
All eleven players took their positions. Two Cameroonian forwards went to the center circle in which the football and had been placed. At the referee’s signal, one passed the ball to the other and ran forward. The first half of extra time had started.
When a person blunders publicly, it feels bad because others criticize him; when he blunders privately, it feels worse because he has to be brave enough to criticize himself.
There I sat, struggling to apologize — to presenters who couldn’t hear me, to a football confederation I hadn’t researched, to a continent I had under looked. It didn’t matter that no one else knew the thoughts I had thought. If anything, the fact — that only I knew my hasty, biased thoughts — haunted me.
A bead of sweat trickled down the bridge of my nose unto the roof of my right nostril, hesitated for a while, then swung underneath it and nestled itself in nasal hair. I blew it out, mopped more sweat from my brow, and wondered why I was sweating during a cold evening. Gradually, I began reconciling myself to the reality that I was consciously attempting to evade — that I was wrong. I was wrong to have criticized the confederation over what I felt was its institutionalized gender bias; wrong to have had a go (albeit mentally) at professional TV presenters and football analysts; wrong to have used a perceived error to vent my angst at a Cameroonian work culture that leaves more than just a bit to be desired. But above all, I was wrong to have assumed that the French commentator couldn’t have been wrong (and I hope, even now, that my assumption wasn’t based only on his being French. I’m not flattered by what that would say about me.)
As extra time ended and the players prepared for a penalty shoot-out, I pondered what exactly was wrong with me. I wondered how I came to develop such bias against my own country and continent. I shook my head at the realization that I had unthinkingly accepted the mistaken opinion of one French commentator over the correct view of four Cameroonian professionals (and over my own initial instinct!).
As if the punishment of my realization wasn’t enough, the lionesses’ third penalty was saved. The fourth grazed the top of the crossbar on its way into the stands. Much to my dismay, the Super Falcons’ third and fourth penalty takers cockily converted their penalties, before running off to celebrate with their team mates. That night was a great night for Nigerian football, a bad night for Cameroonian football and a lesson for me.
