Super snooze

In one of my lesser moments, I slept through Super Bowl XL. I meant to stay up - I specifically asked the hotel manager to make sure ESPN was on in the rooms for the 12:38 am kickoff - but by midnight I couldn't keep my eyes open. There's something about the humidity in Nigeria - it sucks the life out of you, and all the unacclimated want to do is sleep and drink. When I woke up, I briefly panicked that I'd missed some triple-OT classic. Fortunately, it turns out I merely missed one of the sloppier Super Bowls in recent memory. Phew.

Meanwhile, business will come to a standstill here in Nigeria in a few hours, when the national soccer team - the Super Eagles - takes on Cameroon in the African Cup semifinals. (Yes, it's a horrible nickname, but with the Mighty Ducks, Gamecocks and two dozen variations on Indian tribes, who are we to laugh?) Yesterday afternoon I walked through the Kuramo neighborhood of Lagos - a slum that sits right on the Atlantic Ocean, a sprawling maze of plywood shacks - and saw a half-dozen signs advertising satellite broadcasts of this afternoon's match.















There's no running water or power grid in Kuramo, but the few entrepreneurs who have generator-powered TVs and satellite dishes will probably make a killing on the match. I'll be watching from the lobby of my hotel, a few hundred yards away. Let's hope these Eagles don't choke in big games.