6-27-09: Polo Lacrosse

Yesterday I was introduced to a game that I had never known before, called "Polo-X". It combines those haughtily exclusive games, Polo and Lacrosse. It is a bizarre spectacle. People loping around on these huge animals, holding the reins in one hand and a stick with a large circular basket on its end in the other. The game is much more about being a competent rider and properly positioning the horse relative to your competitors than it is about "stick skills" (an attribute my college friend Matt Flanagan has in spades... Hay- yoooo). The quality of the athlete  on the pitch was quite unimpressive... these were horse people. Chubby, red faced teenage girls and their chubbier fathers loped around with what appeared to the uninitiated eye as aimlessness. The maneuvers with the lacrosse sticks were nothing impressive. One imagines Elliot Burkland, with his impressive riding and lax skills, would have laid waste to this lot in his first attempt. However it is also a very dangerous and violent game. The stopping and starting required by lacrosse is not natural for horses and apparently leads to many injuries, for people as well as the animals. One would wager that gents are trampled with some frequency in the pursuit of Polo-X glory.

We took in the match at the Lusaka Polo Grounds, which is quite a scene. Filled mostly with ruddy South Africans clad in riding pants as well as the odd American ex-pat, the populace divided its time between the polo-x match and the televised rugby match, becoming euphoric as one rugby side edged the other (25-22 as a few of the exultant men yelled). 

The group of us who went to the grounds, Ellen, Jack, Emily (led by our local guide Taylor), indulged a Namibian beer called Windhock, named after a German colonial capital in the aforementioned country. I love Windhock. It is a crisp beer, balanced and simple. It is made with only three ingredients: barley, hops and water. It would be sacrilege for me as a Minnesotan to put anything ahead of the Schells or Summit brewers, however... I cannot say enough about this beer. 

My taste in beer has been infinitely refined with the help of one John Stroh, visiting WBR with Vivian and their wonderful kids Christopher and Elizabeth, 15 and 13 respectively. John has much experience in the beer industry as a brewer and also as a beer drinker. His palate is much like mine, he prefers a clean beer he can "drink all day". He has become my beer demagogue, and I his rabid parishioner. Upon arrival to the continent, I had abided the "When in Rome" philosophy and drank Mosi, the ubiquitous Zambian beer exclusively. However, John made light of the fact that it used 6 ingredients to Windhocks 3. That was the end of Mosi for me. Just the other day John told me he held Heineken beer in low regard, due to excessive bitterness. I haven't had one since. 

Anyways, we continued to indulge in the wonderful Windhock as the sun beat down on our tanned hides. Afternoon quickly turned to dusk however, as it is winter down here, and was accompanied by a temperature drop of 20 degree. As the wind began to pick up, we made our way back to the Land Rover. Unsure what to make of our brief foray into the South African easy life, noting its stark contrast to the "the other half" of Zambians, we returned to down on the dusty pot holed road from whence we came.