Day 28 (friday) Happy June (1st) GAME DAY!

Me and Eugene before the match.

A look down the bleachers from where I was sitting.

Me and Eugene again halfway through the match.

Me just after they scored one of their goals...good looking jersey!

This was early on as the crowds began to enter.

Had to find a picture of this guy (in the red)...he's the one who got b@#$h slapped and thrown out.

Lesotho in green preparing for one of their only corner kicks.

 

So I went to bed before 10 and woke up just before 6...FINALLY getting my sleep schedule back to normal, it has been miserable for me for the past couple of years! Had some breakfast and then kind of took it easy for a little while. It was getting close to the time that Eugene was going to come over and get me so I took a shower and got ready. A few minutes had passed (he said between 12 and 12:30) so I decided to lay down and in the back of my head I thought that I might get stood up again. I was just in that really comfortable stage just before you fall asleep and I got a phone call, it was Eugene, now I was getting excited. We left and walked to gates and then snagged a tro tro into town. Traffic was pretty crazy so we just got off and walked the rest of the way to the stadium (the match started at 5 but we wanted to get there a few hours early to ensure that we could get a good seat). I was proud to be wearing my RSL jersey and it turns out, for the most part, that Ghana's colors are the same except for their home games they wear white but I still felt pretty awesome. Everyone kept doing double takes at my jersey but were ultimately cool with it. We got to the stadium and there were people everywhere, people playing music, and people dancing (the stadium seats 40 k) and I got a little spider bite that stung for most of the evening (ended up not being a big deal, just annoying). We found someone and bought a ticket and I came prepared to spend a little bit on them (I found out that the most expensive tickets were the vip section at a whopping 20 cedis [equivalent to just over 10 dollars] and the fun section that we ended up getting, for both tickets, was 10 cedis [just over 5 dollars]). We went in and quickly realized that we could not go back through security nor could we walk around different sections so we walked around ours (I was interested in buying some memorabilia) and then walked in and grabbed some pretty good seats. The weather was overcast the whole time and started to rain as we were sitting but the temperature was cool and I knew the rains would stop, sure enough. More and more people began filling the stadium and the match was about to start, the different supporters sections were all making noise and chanting and before you knew it the players were coming on to the field to warm up, the place erupted! In the meantime I was trying some of the food, tiger nuts and some ground nut candy, and I bought a scarf (which cost me 10 cedis). The tiger nuts were just parts of plant roots but they were really pretty good and the ground nut candy is just ground nuts mixed together with sugar that has been boiled and then solidified (totally vegan). The players came out and we were all ready to go...the stadium was loud and proud and the people nearby were pretty psyched with me and my Ghana scarf. Shortly after, I saw a kid scaling the fence between sections and then he just disappeared into a sea of people (surprising that he wasn't caught because there was such a mass presence of security and police). As the match started I quickly realized that Ghana was by far the better side (kind of like when the USWNT was winning by 10+ but also realized that Lesotho had some mix ups in their travel and they had just arrived that morning) and controlled the ball more efficiently. A few corner kicks and some early missed opportunities and Ghana started killing it. They scored their first goal on a beautiful bender from the top of the box and the crowd went absolutely berserk and one of the nearby supporters jumped on me and we celebrated (don't worry, I was cautious about what was in my pockets, as Eugene politely warned me to be careful) and I held up the scarf and turned around and people cheered even louder. Before too long they scored another goal and then another before halftime. It was going to be a blowout but I was still excited to finish the match and watch some goals scored on our end. The start of the half saw Ghana come out a bit more aggressively and just a few minutes in, they scored again, making it 4 nil. Shortly before the goal though, I saw the guy who jumped on me in celebration, get aggressively approached by some security/fire department personnel and then they began yelling at him and one of the guys went down after him and slapped him in the face and then another (it kind of looked like judo chops) and then the police came too and they literally dragged him up the steps and out of the stadium (this happened literally two steps in front of me...bummed I didn't get any pictures of it but I was just trying to keep myself safe). Shortly after that, no surprise to me, the lights went off! We figured that they would come back on so we waited for awhile then the players went back inside and we were sure that the match would end that way (meaning the 4 nil score would be nullified) which was such a bummer to not get to finish the whole match. There was a mass exodus (and a monkey tied to a pole) and it was pretty scary (it's the perfect time for people to get pick-pocketed or worse) and we got out by the exit gates but they were still locked and no one was coming to unlock them so more people kept crowding around and finally someone decided to keep pushing against the gate until the locks broke off and people could leave. Now imagine thousands of people all rushing out at the same time, it was absolute chaos, but we started walking and realized that we weren't going to be able to get a car home (there were so many people out on the way home that we would have waited hours to get a car then it would have taken quite awhile to actually get home with all the traffic) so we literally walked all the way from the stadium through campus and to the house. It wasn't too bad but I was a bit exhausted and completely drenched in sweat when I got home. I quickly took a cold shower (there is no warm water here unless you boil it first) and knocked to let Maureen know I was home. She was already in bed and it was just before nine. I warmed up some food and sat down. I then learned that as we were just out of sight of the stadium that the lights came back on and they finished the match...7 nil ended up being the final score, sort of bummed that we didn't get to see the whole thing but glad they got the win. I finished my food, chatted with mi madre then laid down and was out pretty quickly...I woke up at 4 but that's it.