Eight days- Football Fever

G-O-O-O-A-A-A-L!

I've honestly never been that interested in football. I was aware of it to the extent that I would sometimes walk through the house and see my brother or GOM yelling at the TV screen like a couple of morons, but I always took it for a load of idiot men running around on a field kicking a bit of blown-up leather.

How wrong I was.

You see, out here the people live and breathe football like oxygen. The channel is turned to the world cup twenty four hours a day, the house is constantly filled with people watching the matches, and even the Rev.- the most mild-mannered man on the entire planet- is magically transformed into a howler monkey for the ninety minutes it takes to play out every game.

On Saturday I was in Takoradi saying goodbye to most of the volunteers, who I will now not see again before they fly this coming Saturday night. We all decided to go down the the Jubilee grounds; a large parade field, to watch Ghana vs USA on the big screen down there. We bedecked ourselves in flags, headbands, hats, and drew black stars all over our bodies in liquid eyeliner, because it was the last chance we'd have to do something like this. As we walked down to the parade grounds, every person we passed cheered us, shouting "GHANA GHANA GHANA!" in our wake; a variation on the usual cry of "Obruni!" The parade ground itself was heaving with people, bearing costumes, flags, banners, huge noisemakers, and the air was buzzing with excitement. Ghana is the last African country in the world cup, and we were facing up to one of the largest superpowers in the entire world... Only on the pitch of course, but there was something rather symbolic about it.

When the first goal came, a few minutes into the match, the entire parade grounds erupted. You've never seen football celebrated until you've watched it with a host of Ghanaians. I was lifted off my feet by a group of men I'd never met before and tossed from person to person, I fought my way back to the people I was watching with and we all leapt up and down, screaming ourselves hoarse and blowing whistles in each others' faces, and the whole place danced like there was no tomorrow. I'd never felt something like that before; I never knew when you take a couple of hundred excited people and put them into one place together the whole quality of the air itself becomes something electric. We were going to win this match!

At half time the enormous speakers blared out music and the dancing continued. It was dark by then and the only light other than that emenating from the huge screen came from the enormous full moon over our heads, sillouhetting the leaping crowd at the front of the field and the enormous flags being waved two and fro, as though someone had put them on slow motion.

And then disaster struck when the USA scored a goal and everything was evened out. When that moment came everything fell suddenly silent- someone in the sky had clearly gone 'enough of that', and turned the volume down. Everyone was too dismayed to even yell abuse at the screen, and suddenly I found myself more tense than I had been since all the visa difficulties I had about a month ago. Over a game of football? What on earth was happening to me? I had to take small periods crouched in a ball with my face against my knees- I couldn't bear to watch the screen and my calves were killing me after over an hour of jumping up and down like an idiot. Oh, and my voice was going. Everything was falling apart!

By the time we got into Extra Time, all the Ghanaians were almost as pale as the smattering of obrunis in the crowd. We needed to win this game or we would be out of the running for the world cup, and that would be a complete and utter disaster for people right the way across the country. When the second goal came and the tension broke, the whole place seemed to explode outwards, a shockwave of hysterical relief passing through the square and sorrounding town. The last seven minutes of the game were carried through by all the people leaping up and down, using our combined mental powers to deflect the ball repeatedly from the Ghanaian goal. If the energy of all the people had a colour it would have been blindingly white, like burning magnesium. We knew the USA wouldn't score again, we weren't going to let them. We had the power.

And so when the final whistle came, the explosion wasn't as vast as it had been for that last goal- from that moment on we had known, secretly that we were safe. And so everybody danced again, under the bright full moon, the air humming with a physical sense of joy. The flags waved, the people sang, there wasn't a single person within a fifty mile radius not celebrating with us. The feeling of concentrated joy, exuded by hundreds of people all at once, is something really quite incredible. When we left the parade grounds we went on to a bar, and then to a club, and when we staggered home at half past four in the morning, the party was still going on. And I was fully converted to the power of football in uniting people, whole countries, giving them something to be proud of, something to celebrate, something to bring them all together. I'm still buzzing now, and I could never have considered a sport capable of bringing on that much excitement. With a week left in Ghana, I am so, so glad I got to share such a fantastic night for everyone in the country.

England lost against Germany on the Sunday night incidentally- but who cares about that?