March Madness in Africa

*This is a letter I tried to send to some choice analysts who head up ESPN's high quality programming. Apparently none of them accept email from common folk. Lame. If you happen to be on speaking terms with Rick Reilly, Tony Kornheiser, Michael Wilbon, Joe Lunardi, or the rest of the gang, pass it on.

It’s the month of March. At home, spring is springing, and the chosen teams – the best of this season – are preparing themselves for the tournament. It’s the most wonderful time of the year.

Here, in my second home, its hot season. In the afternoon, the temperature routinely reaches 120 degrees. The harmattan winds have blown in the dust for the past few months, and now they’re spewing Saharan heat. I sweat through every minute of the day. It’s unquestionably the least wonderful time of the year.

I’m a Peace Corps volunteer, serving in The Gambia, a tiny West African country. I’ve been here for nearly two years – through two Christmases sans snow, two Thanksgivings without turkey, two birthdays but no gifts. But the hardest month to be here is March.

Knowing the basketball fervor that is sweeping the nation – MY nation – makes it harder to be here. There’s no electricity, no running water, much less internet or TV to keep me updated on basketball – I probably own one of only four basketballs in my whole region.

During March, I go to bed under the stars, dreaming of upsets and buzzer beaters. I roll out of my hammock in the morning, already sweating, and turn on my phone, desperate for sympathetic souls in America, or lucky volunteers in the capital, who may have texted to quench my thirst for news of multiple overtimes, freshman phenoms, and the underdog prevailing. These texts of a few hundred characters hardly capture the glorious celebrations and heart breaking defeats that epitomize every weekend in March.

When these beatific texts come, I rush inside my hut, grab some chalk from its rightful place tucked within the thatch in my roof, and fill in my homemade 7 foot x 4 foot bracket, gleaming proudly from the wall of my mud hut.



I have seen exactly zero NCAA basketball games this season. I have read exactly one basketball related magazine – a preseason edition that I perused in early February.

When you have literally no intel, no insight into who’s hot and who’s not, you have to consider other things to make your picks. For example… I killed a gigantic hairy spider right on top of Syracuse’s spot in the bracket. Do I take this as a sign of lackluster defense, or crushing offensive firepower? There’s a pitifully wilting candle nailed into the wall in the elite eight (where last year Florida floundered against those mighty Bulldogs). Do I take this as a sign of that quadrant’s drooping chances at making the final four? Or maybe I should ignore it – everything melts during hot season.

I’ve heard the statistics on a perfect bracket. I have no way to look them up right now, but I know perfect brackets are rare – perhaps even only a legend that has never actually happened. I’m sure the chances of getting a perfect bracket are like one in 212 trillion. (Right before sending this email, I looked it up – one in 9.2 quintillion… Oof)

So - bracketologists, former college players, scouts, and experts in general - I have a proposition to make. If I – Abby Adams: rural literacy volunteer, teacher trainer, and die hard college basketball supporter – compose a perfect bracket, I want you to put ME on ESPN. Not as an expert, or an analyst, but as the voice of one girl who listens to her gut. For one year, I ask to be treated like a SportsCenter anchor – go to games, give my thoughts, predictions, and proclaim my biases and prejudices as truths. Because if, with no experience or knowledge, I create a perfect bracket: maybe it’s meant to be.

After all, what are the odds?

Thank you very dangerously (as they say in the Gambia),

Abby Adams