I wish I could put my facial expression while crafting the headline into words as only then can it convey the most accurate intentions of this piece. After all is said and done, this yalla wahala had better be worth it!
I touched down in Casablanca, Morocco in the wee hours of Saturday after days or even weeks of unprecedented mental stress in the build-up to this trip. While there’s an enforced sigh of relief, there’s also this feeling of “this stress better be worth it in the end.”
To be honest, I haven’t really figured out what and what would happen to give me a feeling of ‘Yes, it was worth it.’ But it still better be worth it, because at least, I have a great level of expectation on the country.
I am returning to Morocco – to cover my seventh international football competition – for the first time since I last visited in January 2018 for the African Nations Championship, my first competition coverage, many thanks to the unbeatable ACLSports.com and our Publisher, Calvin Emeka Onwuka.
https://x.com/calvinemeka/status/2002692441074454703?s=46
What was the wahala about Yalla?
I remember one of my conversations with NFF’s Director of Communications, Dr Ademola Olajire some days ago and his wordplay qualified everything this Yalla has been to most journalists trying to be part of the first winter AFCON in North Africa in twenty years.
“Yalla yen n se yala yala” was what Dr Olajire wrote when I mentioned the difficulties associated with the App to him. As at when I’m typing this, a senior journalist contacted me to inform he had to reschedule his flight because Yalla had yallaed him. It isn’t funny.
Journalists should not be made to go through this to cover a tournament they will expend a lot of energy and capital on. The problems varied from the inability of the App to read some certain passports (hence someone like me who had two years left had to go do an emergency new passport), to submission of required documents and being left hanging for days. This is not it.
Now that we’re here
My first port of call in Morocco is Rabat where I moved to after landing at the Casablanca Airport. It’s my first time in the capital city of Morocco and I’ve seen that it’s a little reserved and classier place than Casa.
I’ve visited the Main Media Centre as well as the Salle Omnisports Ibn Yassine for my accreditation tag. One thing I’ve also noticed is that there are more ladies smiling to me now than seven years ago. Am I more appealing now or they’re now more accommodating than in 2018 when I needed it as I was still single?
