Made in Russia: Babies from the World Cup sexual shenanigans

Some years ago, I used to be the officer in charge of marketing for and managing conferences at the prestigious Arusha International Conference Center, popularly known as the AICC. That was for a period of a little more than a decade.

For proper and efficient management and programming of the conferences we used to, among other arrangements, issue a monthly Conferences Calendar.

Apart from facilitating our conferences management, the calendar was supposed, and rightly so, to assist other conference facilitators, including hoteliers, transport managers and caterers to plan ahead.

Conference business was booming and we used to host more than 200 local and international conferences – the later comprising about 40 per cent – every year.

There was, however, one unique aspect about the international conferences, which was basically out of the norm.

The bigger and more international conferences used to attract a special, and unusual, category of Arusha visitors over and above the normal delegates and their support staff. These were ladies of the night. These ladies used to come from almost all major urban centers in Bongoland as well as from Nairobi and Mombasa in Kenya and Kampala and Entebbe in Uganda.

I never ceased to wonder as to how these ladies got to learn about these conferences as our calendar had a limited circulation. Simple! Some of our stakeholders used to communicate these future events to point-persons in these towns and cities inviting the sisters to come to Arusha and profitably ‘service’ the conferences. A well – oiled business enterprise, if you can ask me. I had almost forgotten about this business until last week when I read news from Putin’s Russia with the eye-catching headline; “Russian Women are Hungry for a Sexual Revolution – and the World Cup is Giving them a Taste.”

“Every night has been full of free-floating emotions, flirting, and drinking with foreign visitors coming from all over the globe to party, watch soccer, and in many cases to find love in Russia,” the Daily Beast wrote. It added that there was plenty of free love in Russia, as well as sex for pay.

Naturally Russian men are not amused. “The Russian internet is flooded with hateful comments and video blogs condemning ‘Natashas’ for supposedly shaming their country,” wrote the Daily Beast. “With all due respect for our women, I honestly do not understand their attraction to Latin and African men these days, “ Popov, a 32-year-old divorcee told the Daily Beast.

“They drink together and have sex, it has nothing to do with long-term fun,” he added.

Notwithstanding, I would not be surprised to find, in a year or so to come, a lot of ‘World Cup Children’ in the many Russian cities hosting the global tournament.

And I should know. There are presently several ‘Burundi Peace Talks’ young men and children in the streets of Arusha. It is thanks to the marathon Burundi Peace Talks which took place at the AICC more than two decades ago.

May be the world is, in its own natural way, fast becoming a global village.