Tunasherekea: Umoja Ball and the Sauti za AFCON
As I started the resolutions for Heart of a Fan in the new year, one of the key things that I wanted to explore were the sports and fanbases I knew absolutely nothing about.
It’s so easy to have the more popular sports consume your attention, given how easy it is to access the core four of the NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL here in the States. However, there are lessons in community building and community advocacy that can come from anywhere and any sport.
Now, I’ll be fully transparent with you: I’m not the sports encyclopedia everyone expects me to be, or that my name gives off (If I knew how to make the best fantasy football team, I would share it with you all too).
However, like any time you learn something new, your world view and perspective becomes all the richer.
That is the case with this first column in the New Year, as we get an education in one of the most joyful tournaments in all of football: AFCON.
In a group chat I’m in, I’ll get so many tweets about how the CAF and AFCON are the absolutely best with their national histories and joyful fandom. Yet, you can’t understand the impact of something culturally from just a tweet.
I’ve invited three life long fans of the tournament, bloggers, and subscribers to teach us about what this time of the year means to them and what the world can learn about community building from the fandoms of AFCON.
Let’s hear what Kwame Twumasi-Ankrah, Mohamed Barrie, and Oluwaferanmi have to say…