GOOOAAAALLLLL

Well I stayed up pretty late to watch the Richmond v. KU basketball game…mistake. I should have slept and then woken up to watch the two games after that. Oh well. Needless to say I didn’t get much sleep…before breakfast. Afterwards, I still didn’t get much sleep in between the random phone calls and knocks on the door, which were either answered by a very groggy Simon or Greg.

Most of that post-breakfast dealt with getting tickets to that night’s soccer match, but at the time both Simon and I were ready to say screw it let us sleep! I am glad we didn’t. After leaving later than one could in the US and expect to see any significant action, we took a few matatus and finally arrived at the stadium. It wasn’t anything too spectacular as it only holds 30,000 people and is nothing more than a really big, circular stair case inside. But what did stand out was the 6” barbed-wire fence that encircled the playing field. That was new. But considering the stadium is an built in a way that nothing can be destroyed or used against anyone else in a brawl, it seemed like it was probably necessary.

Before we even entered the stadium, we had to make our way through the hoards of people, most of whom were scalping, selling or stealing. Completely aware of my surroundings, I actually caught a pick-pocket going for my phone. I grabbed him and spun him around only to find out that there was a whole team of them and had it escalated, I could have lost a lot more than my phone. I let it slide, but I think that may have scared him enough.

But this match was everything you would expect in an African stadium – chaos. 95% of the people were Kenyan supporters who showed up hoping that they would see a miracle as the national team had only won one match in their past 19! And that is exactly what they got, a miracle. Well, the Kenyan side played a much better match than the supposedly superior Angolan side. So it wasn’t exactly a miracle, but the final goal came in the closing minutes of the game from a spectacular strike at the top of the 18. It was incredible and as fate would have it, Simon and I were sitting about 30” from the pitch at a good angle from the home side goal. All of the goals happened right in front of us so it was pretty cool.

As for that fence, we found out pretty quickly why it was there. Even the slightest bad call brought down a shower of empty and full pop bottles onto the field along with the typical jeering, whistles, drums, and vuvuzelas. And after both of the goals, people in the stands rushed the fence and quite a few made it over. There was a design flaw making it fairly easy to make it over unscathed. But the ones who made it over ran around the field taunting the other team and just being taken away by the moment. Security didn’t really seem to do much as the fans were all probably aware of the fact that the Gor Miah (one of the Kenyan Premier League teams) fans were tear gassed for bull-rushing the field after some controversial calls. Aside from that, there isn’t much that can compare to the crowd’s reaction after a goal. Even on a bigger stage, people are in control and rarely leave their seats. But when the seats don’t exist, per se, everyone melds together into a mob and it is insane. The only thing that I could compare it to would be like a very very very big version of Habiyé without the rusty spears and machetes and arrows and frogs. It was surreal.

After the game, the streets were flooded with people and shut down highways and roads on the way to the city centre to celebrate the victory.