The Beautiful Noise?

For all those of you intrepid adventurers coming out here to Sunny South Africa for the FIFA World Cup, brace yourselves. Today I experienced firsthand the assault that is the VUVUZELA. The kids were totally jazzed that today was Vuvuzela Friday - all part of the big World Cup buildup - and could take their Vuvuzelas to school. This meant mommy had to buy them said Vuvuzelas which we did late yesterday afternoon. Amazingly enough, for an adult they are almost impossible to blow. However for an 8 year old and a 5 year old, this talent comes all too easily.
Within minutes of buying the things our house was resounding with a sound similar to that of a bull elephant with his testicles caught in a bear trap. Not pleasant. And very very loud. And persistent. And you guessed it; agonising. By the time I went to bed last night I truthfully thought my eardrums were bleeding.

This morning, en route to school which is only a twenty minute car ride, the vuvuzelas were blown, waved about and even burped through which reduced me to a gibbering heap of jangled nerves with a twitching left eye. The school ground was alive with the sound of tooting. Four hundred little people ranging in age from three to twelve were racing about with their multicoloured instruments of torture, blasting them with precision at anything that moved and where the talent for blowing was not so great, sword fighting with the things. Never was a mother so delighted to drop off her kids and leg it for work. I don't think the car even stopped properly before mine were dispatched and I was  weaving my way through the traffic to get the hell outa there. Their teachers have a new found degree of respect from me for dealing with that lot.

So here is the thing. These innocuous looking plastic tubes can let out a sound well in excess of any EU decibel safety limit and could be used quite effectively, if it ever came to that, for cruel and unusual punishment in time of war. Guantanamo Bay could have shelved the Kylie and Brittany CD's happily and saved loads of money by just having a few small five year olds and a Vuvuzela on permanent rotation to extract whatever intel they ever needed from even the most hardened terrorist.

I fetched my offspring this afternoon who both complained of various Vuvuzela incidents. My eldest had been sword fighting and had a vuvuzela broken over his arm by a class mate. Both complained of tingling lips and the youngest said his had spit running out the end of his. I have had to shout and use sign language for all hell hour instructions this evening and been met several times by doe eyed stares of incomprehension; I think their ears are still ringing from 8 hours straight cacophonic abandon. My heart goes out to their teachers, brave souls that they are.

What worries me is the assault that awaits our international visitors coming here to watch a few games of footie. I barely survived twenty minutes in a car with just two of the bloody things. How will anyone survive a two hour football match with fifty thousand of them in full swing? Never let it be said you went unwarned.