Aha to Ha Ha Moments in My Life

My daughter slumped in her chair and cried uncontrollably, tears rolled down the cheeks of my wife. My son and I tried our best to rationalize the demise of a demi-god and stifle our tears. The sight of a forlorn Messi staring into emptiness will forever haunt our memories. We were hoping that Messi would perform his magic and leave his mark on the world stage and silence his critics. But, alas it was not to be. He loved to play football. This simple statement was often cited to explain the genius of Messi. He loved playing the beautiful game and it had taken him to dizzying heights but also constantly put him under severe pressure and unfair comparisons. The same game he loved so much had turned into a nightmare for him this world cup.   By his own admission, he “could not remember such suffering before” In retrospect, we could see that the writing was on the wall. In the first game when he missed the penalty, during the National anthem for the second gam...

Goal! This single word will reverberate across the globe in a few days from now. As the most popular sport on the planet, football has its followers everywhere. Even in Cricket crazy India, there is growing interest and fan following thanks to English Premier League and the recently concluded Champions league finals. But football world cup with all its hype propels the game into a different league. But here in South Sudan, catching the game live on TV is still very rare. Football has always been very popular in Africa with some teams like Nigeria and Cameroon kicking butt of some of the more famous teams. Here in Juba, slowly but surely the football fever is catching up. All the bars and restaurants have started their renovation in good measure. Re-painting the walls, sprucing up the interiors with loud curtains and matching paint schemes. But most importantly, customers are demanding that the hotels renew their subscriptions to Super Sports the one channel which relays all foot...

Midnight, I woke up in a pool of sweat. The generator was switched off leaving the pedestal fan lifeless once again. With the buzz of the generator gone, I could now hear a feeble sound. Is it a bird? At this time of night. No, it sounded more like a squirrel, or a mouse perhaps? I powered on my phone torch and opened the door to investigate the strange noise. The noise was coming from the high wall right behind my room. The torch light beam caught the razor sharp barbed wire running on top of the wall. Then I saw it. At first, I was convinced it is a squirrel caught in the barbed wire trying to wriggle, then when I took a closer look, it was the bright yellow eyes of a cat, a kitten actually. In the darkness of the night, I could only make out its silhouette as it was completely black in colour. The tiny black creature was obviously very weak from struggling to get out of the trap on the 7 foot high brick wall. When I shined the torch closely, I could see that its right front p...