Vuvuzelas

(PICTURE: South African fans blowing vuvuzelas.)

For those of you who are going to watch the World Cup, you're going to constantly hear a horn sound emanating from thousands of vuvuzelas. A vuvuzela is a long plastic horn and perhaps the most annoying sound in the world at the moment. It seems that every person in South Africa has a vuvuzela and love to blow it everywhere and at every time. During our first dinner last night, some British fans starting blowing their vuvuzela at their table a few feet away from us. There's nothing like a loud horn sound in your ear when trying to enjoy a meal. Then this morning, someone/dozens of people started to blow their vuvuzelas outside of our hotel around 4AM.

Here's a couple of my thoughts about the vuvuzela:
1. What's the point in just making noise? If both teams' fans have vuvuzelas how does one team know who is cheering? To me, it is noise for noise sake.
2. After coming from a safari, this noisemakers make everyone just sound like buffaloes (think cows with horns). Basically the buffaloes on the safari would just walk around and then let out a big moooooooo like sound. It's sort of the same thing with these horns. People basically raise the horns up and for no apparent reason give it a big blow.
3. These horns remind me of high school soccer. Randolph High School -- one of Livingston's rivals -- always had a bunch of fans in the stands who blew vuvuzelas. This was circa 1995 & 1996. I hope those fans invested in the horns because they'd be multi-millionaires after this World Cup.

I thought my experience in Vietnam with horn honking would have prepared me better for the noise of the vuvuzelas, but alas it hasn't. That said, I'm sure I'll be picking one up in the next day or so and tooting it to my heart's desire.