Copa Mudial

A momentous event happened a few weeks ago, the likes of which haven’t been seen by this country for quite some time: Honduras advanced from their group to qualify for the World Cup (well, actually they only qualified to advance to the next round of qualifying rounds of the World Cup, but the way they celebrated after the win, you would have thought they won the whole thing).

For those of you not following current World Cup play, it takes place in South Africa in 2010 (and don’t worry, the US is doing just fine). I guess I never really understood how intense people get about the world cup (minus a few soccer-playing friends in high school, I never really knew anyone who cared much for how the US did (probably because we always lose)). Anyways, people here treated every world cup qualifying game (mind you, only a game to qualify) as if it were a Superbowl-World Series-Olympics-NASCAR mezcla all rolled into one: shops closed, people came in from the aldeas to crowd around a TV with friends and families, the game was projected (by those with projection capabilities) onto any available wall, and by the time the game rolled around you would have thought that Talanga was a ghost town due to how empty and lifeless the streets were.

That all changed once Honduras beat Mexico 1-0 to classify for the next round. As the ref called for time people throughout the city erupted into celebration—a combination of people yelling\chanting\singing, (unsafe) fireworks exploding, and car horns honking (I would liken the sound more so to shrieking banshees). Before long, those same cars\people\fireworks filled the streets and became mobile, forming a caravan of noise that tore throughout the city. People would periodically jump into\out of this moving caravan of vehicles, and after observing the correct mounting and dismounting techniques for a moment, I followed my host dad’s lead and joined the parade of noise. I’ll try to get some videos up to provide a better idea of the chaos that ensued.
As a final note, the next qualifying round begins in February, and unfortunately, it turns out that the US and Honduras will be in the same group (that’s a lose-lose either way for us volunteers: either the US wins and everyone will be upset with us, or the US loses and everyone will not-so-kindly remind us of this). Only time will tell. I can say that I admire the passion these people have for their country and the people\teams that represent it in worldwide competitions.