Harare/Maputo - Some time over the next six months Miriam Vambe hopes to be boarding a plane for the first time, direction South Africa. Most Zimbabweans undertake the long journey across the border to South Africa by bus, bumping and grinding over roads riddled with potholes. But world football body FIFA is not short of the price of a plane ticket.
If her application to be one of 15,000 volunteers at the World Cup in South Africa next year is successful, Vambe can expect to travel in some comfort.
The 34-year-old teacher and single mother of two from Harare is one of 449 Zimbabweans who have applied to help out at the event. From her school alone, in the capital's high-density suburb of Highfields, seven teachers have applied.
"It will be such a great experience and probably my only chance to attend a World Cup match given my salary," she says. "Plus, I am sure they (FIFA) will pay us more than our monthly salary (between 150 and 175 dollars a month)."
The volunteer programme is one way in which South Africa's neighbours hope to get a look in on a tournament that has billed as Africa's World Cup but in reality has become a very South African affair.
Of the 15,000 volunteers spots, around 80 per cent have been reserved for South Africans, against approximately 10 per cent for the rest of Africa and 10 per cent for the rest of the world.
When it comes to tickets, South Africa's neighbours get no special treatment whatsoever: The cheap tickets are reserved for South African residents only. For the rest of Africa, the starting price for a ticket is an exorbitant 80 dollars.
"I think it will be a bit limited for us," Botswana's President Ian Khama told German Press Agency
