I find it funny to read lots of American and Canadian weblogs, because I am reminded of things that I have forgotten about while living in tropical Africa. E.g., "Oh yeah, I guess it's winter over there," or "Thank god they don't celebrate St. Patrick's Day in Mali."

The other Hot Blog Topic these days is NCAA basketball. And strangely, that's what's on TV right now in Bamako!

I really don't understand our TV programming. We just have a rooftop antenna, no satellite or anything fancy. (Though even antennas are valuable commodities; the man who sold it to us wanted to make sure we had a guard, so as to prevent someone from going up to the roof in the night and stealing it.) Until last week our TV channels were: 1 - CNN, 2 - Africable: Le Chaine du Continent, 3 - ORTM, 4 - TV5 Afrique. Then one day nothing was coming in right. After several re-scans of the airwaves our TV found five channels, the four mentioned above (in the wrong order!) plus one mystery channel. This channel mostly shows programs from Planete, a sort of French Discovery/History/Travel channel. Weekday mornings it's old footage of disasters or WWII fighter planes (yawn). In the evenings it's wildlife programs and "The Most Beautiful Bays in the World" and so on.

Saturday mornings, the channel changes from Planete to Sport+. This Saturday morning, Sport+ is showing the Gonzaga-Winthrop game, with French commentary. Except for the French commentary, it reminds me of my college years in North Carolina, where basketball is a huge, huge deal. Most of my friends did not care about any sports whatsoever but would get insanely, feverishly worked up over college basketball games.

Senior year, I had two roommates, one from Durham, who rooted for Duke, and one from the coast, who rooted for UNC-Chapel Hill. After a few disastrous, emotional viewings of the Duke-Carolina game they had to create some strict regulations: Not only would they not watch the game together, but they would not speak about it to each other for a full three days afterwards.

Me, I never got into it, but I'm leaving Sport+ on this morning, because the echoing cheers and the buzzer and the rubber soles squeaking on the court remind me pleasantly of home. Isn't it funny how things you never really cared about can make you the most nostalgic?