Black Stars

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Sorry I haven’t posted in so long; things have been really busy lately. So this post is from two weekends ago, March 28th and 29th.

It has been one of my goals while I’m in Ghana to see a football match (aka soccer game) since the sport is such a big part of the culture. The Black Stars is Ghana’s national football team, and they were playing in Kumasi for a World Cup qualifier game, so my friends and I decided to make the trek out to see them. The official home stadium of the Black Stars is right here in Accra, but Togo was playing there because they are not allowed to play at home any more because their fans get too violent. So not only would the Ghana match be safer, but we would also get to see the Black Stars as opposed to foreign teams. On a side note, South Africa is hosting the World Cup in 2010 and it is the first time it will be played in Africa. There are already advertisements for it all over Ghana.

The weekend involved a lot of waiting, typical Ghanaian fashion. It took us 8 hours to get to Kumasi from Accra. Of course, our bus was about an hour late and the traffic in and out of Accra is terrible, so it tacks on about an extra hour to what the trip should be. We were lucky though; the bus that left before us was 1 ½ hours late and then broke down just an hour into the trip. I had a friend on that bus and it took her 12 hours to get to Kumasi. Anyway, most of the road was good, so I got to sleep for the better part of the bus ride.

Once in Kumasi we checked into our hotel, where we had booked one of the dormitories. Dormitory style rooms are a great deal when you’re travelling with 6-8 people and it’s nice because we all get to stay in the same room. We had 6 girls and 1 boy in a room with 4 sets of bunk beds and its own bathroom for only 8 cedis per person (about $6.15). Of course, the ceiling on the bathroom was a bit moldy, but the accommodations were otherwise very nice by Ghanaian standards.

We ate dinner at a local restaurant walking distance from the hotel. Outside, there were several vendors selling mostly paintings and woodcarvings. Surprisingly, one of them knew us. We had met him at the pool in Kumasi on our last trip with our program, where he introduced himself as “da boss ah da boss.” The first time we met, he had told me that he was a very rich rapper and hung out with people like Madonna, Jay-Z, Oprah, and Obama on a regular basis. He also said he had body guards, a private helicopter, and a ya-ch-t in the Caribbean. Da boss wasn’t someone we could have easily forgotten, but it was very surprising to see him again. He kept up his front about being rich, but never addressed why he was selling paintings on the side of the road. He is by far the most entertaining person I have met here, and it just goes to show how small the world really is.

The next morning we woke up early, at 5 am, to head to the stadium and buy tickets for the game. We heard from 2 separate sources that we should get there by 5:30 to make sure we got tickets. We arrived at about 5:45 and there were only 3 other people there. Another group of obruni girls. One of the guards told us tickets would go on sale between 6 and 7, so we stayed to save a good spot in line. At 7am, more people, including Ghanaians started showing up and shockingly got in line behind us. Usually there is no such thing as a line in Ghana. At around 7:30 things began to make more sense as the guard yelled something in Twi and all the Ghanaians sprinted around the corner. We had been waiting in the wrong place, but no one bothered to tell us, even when we asked official employees of the stadium. The ticket booths were just around the corner where we proceeded to stand in line for another hour and a half. We heard people saying ticket sales would start anywhere from 8am to noon, so we decided to keep waiting and if it got late, we’d call the other people we came with to take our place in line.

At about 8:15 a group of people started mobbing the gate next to the ticket booths. I went over to check it out. People were handing money through the fence to a man inside who promised to return with their tickets. I was skeptical, so I returned to line. Just before 9am heavy clouds appeared on the horizon and we all knew we were in for a storm when the winds kicked in. Estimating that we only had about 30 minutes before the rains started and delirious from lack of food and sleep, we joined the crowd by the fence and handed 140 cedis to the man on the other side. Now to express the gravity of the situation, we were only paying 10 cedis per ticket, but 140 cedis is more than most people make in several months, so we were very worried the man would not return. My friend Cari made him swear on his life that he would return with our tickets and if he did not God would help her hunt him down. It took about 15 minutes, but it felt like an eternity before he came back with our tickets. We made it back to our hotel just before it started raining.

We were also told to arrive very early for the match. At 12:30 our R.A. called from Accra to ask if we were at the stadium yet, even though the match didn’t start until 5:00. The three in my group that didn’t wake up early to get tickets went to reserve our seats and said the place was empty. It began getting busy at 3:30, and we arrive right around 4:00 with out any problems. There were military cadets there to help us find our seats, and they figured out some confusion for us about people who had taken our seats. The cadets were just as excited to watch the match as everyone else there. Once play started, they sat down or stood on the steps and neglected their duties to watch the game. It was funny to see so many men in military uniforms piling on top of each other just for a chance to watch their team play.
After all that waiting around, I still really enjoyed watching it and being a part of the crowd. Ghana scored within the first two minutes and the crowd got really pumped up. But the game was scoreless after that and it seemed that Ghana wasn’t on top of its game. Luckily, Benin was no better so Ghana still pulled off a win. The game ended with out celebration, though, because fans were disappointed with Ghana’s performance.

The next morning we woke up early to catch the bus home. It was an uneventful ride until I was woken up by a strange smell. The woman sitting across the aisle from me got sick. For the next two and a half hours I had to make sure I breathed through my mouth and keep my head turned in the opposite direction so I didn’t share that poor woman’s fate. I was a little frustrated with her, however, when we stopped for a few minutes, because she did not get out to throw away the bag she had gotten sick in. For the whole trip she made no effort to clean up the mess or to discard the bag that was causing the majority of the smell. The ride seemed to last forever, but we finally got back to Accra and made it home to our safe little haven in Legon!

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