The Rumble in the Jungle

The first thing that you'll notice about the stamp above is that the date (in European format) is September 25, 1974 -- and the fight was actually five weeks later.

The fight was originally set to happen September 25, but Foreman was cut near his right eye during training and the date pushed back to October 30 (it was 8 p.m. Eastern time, Oct. 29 in the U.S.). Ali won the fight by targeting the original cut and by the end of the fight Foreman was bleeding so much that his vision was impaired.

The stamps aren’t worth much: you can find an entire sheet of them on e-Bay for a few dollars.

There were few Americans in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the 1970s (though there were decades of missionaries from Belgium and elsewhere in Europe).  When someone learned you were American the first questions were always, "Do you know Muhammad Ali?  Do you know James Brown?", as they were heroes in Zaire. 

When the fight was announced, it was a HUGE deal.  However, the fight in Kinshasa was in the middle of the night ... literally at 4 a.m. local time.  Now, mind you, in the little town of Kasongo 1,000 miles to the east the electricity went off at midnight, so you had to be prepared with a battery-operated radio.  But I wasn't staying up for it in any case, as I taught five classes most days from 7:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

It was my second year of teaching, so I already had a well-established reputation and the fight was Oct. 30, or about eight weeks into the school year.  It was Wednesday, I think ... I'm not even sure because of the overnight thing.  But the week before, I'd offered to cover any bets on Ali -- with me the math teacher taking Foreman.  Not surprisingly, there were no takers: my kids were pretty poor; and betting was not at all common in the society; boxing itself wasn't practiced as a sport.

I woke up Wednesday morning about 6:30 a.m. and heard the trucks driving by the house on the way to the ferry and train 24 miles away.  Everybody on the trucks was singing ... and I immediately knew who had won the fight.    Not surprisingly, when I started every one of my classes that morning there was total chaos as I was mocked for my bad fight predictions.  (Our school director was pretty strict about class conduct, but I was on my own for a morning.)

A three-night-long music festival to hype the fight, "Zaire 74", took place as scheduled, September 22–24, including performances by James Brown, Celia Cruz and the Fania All-Stars, B.B. King, Miriam Makeba, The Spinners, Bill Withers, The Crusaders, and Manu Dibango.  There's a movie from 2008 "Soul Power" that documents the music side.

Last updated: 11/22/2024

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