Baseball and football typically are the sports foreign tourists watch to get a sense of American culture.
Ugandan visitor Lucy Imalingat went to the Durango Roller Girls’ Derailers-Rocky Mountain Roller Girls Project Mayhem roller derby bout instead.
“Durango is going to be my community for about four months, and I like to understand what goes on in my community,” Imalingat said.
She came to Durango from Uganda to learn about regulation in the gas and oil industry through a program in Uganda’s Department of State Education and Cultural Affairs.
“Where I come from, oil and gas has recently been discovered, but we need regulations put in place,” Imalingat said.
Imalingat has been in Durango for a week and also attended the trade fair and talent show before going to the roller derby.
“Durango people are like Africans,” she said. “They are very friendly and really like to make somebody feel at home when you are here.”
At first Imalingat didn’t understand what was going on in the roller derby bout; she never had seen anything like it before.
Ugandans primarily watch Premier League soccer on television because there aren’t many local organized sports.
Once she noticed the maneuvering and strategy, Imalingat began to enjoy the bout and began to stand and cheer more as it progressed.
“When it started, everyone was running around; I saw them being defensive trying to prevent the opponent from crossing over, and that’s when I understood how they made the points,” she said. ”Otherwise I would have just seen them rolling around, and it was not interesting.”
kgrabowski@durangoherald.com
