Match du Football

Update: PICTURES

On Saturday March 25, I had the pleasure of attending a soccer game between the national teams of Senegal and Cameroon. Before I went, I joked with some of my Senegalese buddies that I was going to root for Cameroon, just to be a bit of a "merde perturbateur". Then the woman who owns my guesthouse told me that the last game between The Gambia and Senegal resulted in both a Gambia win, and a beating for all Gambian fans. Change of plan! GO SENEGAL!

Becca and I opted not to show up six hours early as another friend had chosen to do. Instead, we felt 1.5 hours was sufficient. The line up outside the stadium when we got there was ginormous, but moving pretty quickly. Once we got into the actual stadium, there were many more lines corresponding to the colour of your wristband. We were yellow. After standing in the yellow line for 20 minutes with no movement (the door was shut and it didn't seem that there was any intention by stadium staff to reopen it) we opted instead for the blue line. We were immediately ushered to the front of the line, for no other reason than we were white (as far as I could tell).

We had landed ourselves in the covered section. We did not pay for the covered section. Oh well! There were no seats left whatsoever, so we sat on the stairs as many others had begun to do. This stadium would fail every kind of fire regulation in Canada, that's for sure. Good thing people weren't lighting flares in the middle of the crowd - OH WAIT - they were!

The game itself, up until the 92nd minute, was not spectacular. As is typical with most soccer games I seem to watch, the score was nil-nil and the players ran a lot, and fell down a lot. But that 92nd minute changed everything. Senegal scored. I have honestly not seen so much joy and jubilation in one place. People went CRAZY. Becca and I were splashed with water as people swung their water bottles around in fits of euphoria. The man beside me, who until that point had been fairly reserved, picked me up and gave me a huge bear hug; not putting me down until about 10 seconds later. "EXTRAORDINAIRE!" "INCROYABLE!" And it went on, and on, and on. People began to storm the field, and the police didn't get them under control for a good 15-20 minutes.

It was a pretty fantastic experience. I'll add pictures to Picasa once my internet connection is strong enough to handle it.