East Africa United in CHAN defeat, as Kenya and Tanzania co-host the Sofa

DAR ES SALAAM: Two down, one to go… THAT was the headline I had lined up, gleaming in the draft folder, waiting to be uploaded with the smugness of a man who knows his neighbours will not sleep.

Kenya had already done their part by bowing out to Madagascar earlier, bless them.

All that remained was for us, Tanzania, to topple Morocco and establish ourselves as the saviours of East Africa at the CHAN 2024.

The memes were sharpened, the hashtags rehearsed, the jokes polished like shoes for Eid. This was to be our night of reckoning.

Except it wasn’t.

Because while Kenya was out courtesy of penalties and heartbreak, we were out courtesy of a single, efficient Moroccan goal.

Oussama Lamlioui tapping in our funeral notice with all the ceremony of a postman delivering bills.

Suddenly my headline looked less like East African triumph and more like an obituary. Two down, one down…

It’s one thing to lose, but it’s quite another when the neighbours across the fence are already waiting.

Waiting with phones fully charged, Wi-Fi on standby, memes pre-downloaded and keyboards greased with tea and chapati crumbs.

Kenyans do not need joy to sustain them; they need only Tanzanian sorrow. And last Friday night, we gave it to them wholesale.

You see, East Africa’s greatest sport is not football. It is not athletics. It is not even politics, although that runs a close second.

It is the timeless, generational, God-given sport of banter.

Kenyans think they invented it, Tanzanians think they perfected it and Ugandans… well, Ugandans think they are above it until we drag them in.

And at CHAN 2024, cohosted right here on our soil, that sport reached new heights. Kenya had started with such promise.

First ever CHAN appearance, home advantage at Kasarani, crowds singing until their throats cracked.

Alphonce Omija even gave them the lead against Madagascar and you could almost feel Nairobi rehearse the parade.

They tweeted, posted and TikTok’d like men possessed. “We are not like Tanzania,” they wrote. “We score. We win. We speak fluent English.”

For half an hour, you would think Shakespeare himself was buried in Lang’ata.

But then Madagascar equalised. The penalty was soft enough to be used as a pillow, but it counted all the same.

Extra time came and went. Penalties arrived and Kenyans everywhere discovered that their ancestors had built roads and tea farms, but not a reliable penalty taker.

Madagascar won 4–3 and Nairobi descended into collective mourning.

Except mourning in Kenya is never silent. Within minutes, they had turned their failure into a weapon, packaging it neatly for export across the border.

“We may have lost,” they said, “but we sent you Morocco.”

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Kenyans were now outsourcing their revenge.

Unable to do the job themselves, they subcontracted to North Africa.

It was the footballing equivalent of calling your big cousin to beat up your school bully.

And for a brief, shimmering moment, we Tanzanians believed we could still have the last laugh.

Our stadium was full, our drums were loud and our optimism was eternal.

And if eternal optimism were a trophy, we would have a cabinet fuller than Real Madrid’s.

Every Tanzanian knows this feeling: The unshakeable belief that “hii timu saizi yetu kabisa,” even when the opposition is a two-time champion.

And your striker is fasting on both food and goals and his deputy is his equivalent.

So, when Morocco scored and the final whistle blew, the silence in Dar was deafening. You could hear the sound of deleted tweets. The celebratory draft I had written was erased faster than you can say “ctrl-alt-delete.”

Kenyans wasted no time. They danced all night on our digital grave.

“At least we speak English,” they jeered, as though grammar ever scored goals.

I read one post that said, “Your players speak fluent Kiswahili… but do goals understand Kiswahili?”

It was brutal, efficient, devastating — everything their penalties were not.

Now, both of us are out. Kenya out, Tanzania out. Two noisy neighbours reduced to cheering for Uganda. Imagine the indignity.

Co-hosts who spent the week laughing at each other now holding hands like widows at a funeral, whispering desperate prayers for Kampala.

Uganda, the reluctant big brother, suddenly finds itself saddled with the hopes of two nations whose main contribution so far has been to fight on Twitter and Instagram.

You could almost hear Uganda sigh, roll up its sleeves, and mutter, “These children of mine, will they ever grow?”

Uganda’s role is a thankless one. When they win, we clap politely and claim regional unity.

When they lose, we shove them back into their corner and remind them they are the quieter sibling.

Yet here we are, begging them not to embarrass us further. The entire East African dream now rests on a team that didn’t even ask to babysit.

And you can bet your last coin that if Uganda do fall, both Kenya and Tanzania will be the first to laugh. We are cruel like that.

But let’s return to Kenya, because they must not be let off easily.

They love to boast of their English, as though tenses can defend a corner. “We may not win, but at least we speak good English,” they say.

Congratulations, dear neighbours. When AFCON comes, perhaps you will charm the referee by reciting Hamlet while we score.

And speaking of AFCON, let me remind you — it is not far. Inshallah, if the Almighty wills, we shall meet you there.

After all we, again, are also co-hosting it!

And if and when we do, you will cry and gnash your teeth. Mark it down in your diaries, in the Queen’s English, if you so please.

Because here is the truth: we Tanzanians may lose on the pitch, but we do not lose hope. Hope is our national dish, served with a side of stubbornness.

We will always believe that next time is our time, that tomorrow will bring goals, that destiny has our number saved.

And if destiny doesn’t pick up, we’ll call again. That is why we will keep singing, keep dancing, keep filling stadiums and keep believing that maybe, just maybe, we are a footballing nation.

Even if the evidence suggests otherwise.

Kenya, meanwhile, are cursed by their own eloquence. They play football like they speak English: With confidence, flair and a tendency to collapse when it matters.

They will dominate possession of grammar, win the statistics of adjectives and then miss the open goal of victory.

They remind us of students who can recite Shakespeare but fail the maths test. Pretty words, empty marks.

So, the online war rages. Every Kenyan loss is a Tanzanian meme. Every Tanzanian stumble is a Kenyan thread.

And in the middle stands Uganda, weary, amused, forced to parent two children who fight over everything from football to who invented chapati.

But perhaps that is East Africa’s real glory. Not the trophies we win — God knows those are rare — but the laughter we share when we don’t.

For in the end, our banter is as fierce as our football is fragile.

We will tease, mock, ridicule and insult, but always with the unspoken knowledge that we are family.

Dysfunctional, noisy, hilarious family.

So let Morocco march on, let Madagascar dream, let Senegal and the rest of the continent fight for glory.

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East Africa has already won, not on the pitch, but on the timeline. And while trophies gather dust, memes live forever.

Still, I close with a warning to Nairobi: AFCON is coming. We shall meet again.

And when that day comes, may the Almighty bear witness as you weep, wail and gnaw your teeth in Queen’s English, while we sing our victory in Kiswahili.