World Cup Fever Part 1: “Now wave your flag, now wave your flag…”

Music pumping out of three four foot speakers, village rumbling while members of the community running about cheering and yelling. Yes sir, the world cup is happening; every Ghanaian television is tuned in!

Our first game was on June 13^th. The whole village bussing, “are you going to watch the football game? Where? It’s on at __ come over and watch”. Yellow, green and red everywhere, shirts, pants, flags, taxi and trow trow decorated, flags wrapped around heads, market workers with the flags wrapped around their business clothes, the colors literally everywhere. Me and the other volunteers headed across the village to one of our host family’s house. We filed into, with the father, children and a few of their friends, the living room. We all watched in excitement, the village so oddly quiet, everyone inside their houses tuned into their televisions. So I sat in a chair in the corner of the room, curled up, quiet as a mouse, holding it all back.

If you know me you know I am not a football’er. I don’t have the natural touch nor can I scout out the whole field in seconds to make the perfect pass but one thing I do have is the heart, I love the game. I was brought up a daddy’s girl, watching the world cup every year it was on from my dad’s lap, him yelling in my ear, “the yellow, the red, the black! It’s their year, It’s their year!!”(typical diehard fan… to bad he supports Germany). This wasn’t brought to the rest of the rooms attention until the first shot on goal and my accidental muttering of, “Bullshit…” and the little laugh that followed that they realized how into the game I was.

The game was intense and I couldn’t keep quiet so I started talking to one of the other volunteers. I had mentioned one of my good friends who is a really good goalie and started talking about one day when he was sharing his “secrets”(sorry about this!). He was telling how difficult it was to judge a penalty kick and how sometimes it comes down to a last second decision of left or right? Which way is it going? Then you jump. I continued my story of how he said intimidation is one of the key factors(kind of like Life of Pi and the determining who is the Alpha male). Was it not seconds later the volunteers phone rang and a call was made in the game resulting in a penalty kick for Ghana! Insane or what?! My friends host father got up and left the room, just shaking his head, he could not watch. We all waited…(at this point my fellow Canadians, think of Olympic moment of Sydney Crosby skating up to the net to shot the last shot of the game…). He shots, he… SCORES!!!!!!!! We all jumped out of our seat, cheering in excitement, some grabbed the person next to them, so exciting! You could hear the distant cheers from around the village. We were all glowing with excitement, well I know me as well as all the Ghanaians in the room were! I yelled from my friend’s host father to get inside, we scored, we scored! It was all so exciting. For the rest of the match we sat in nerves, 80^th minutes, 81^st minute, 89^th minutes…It wasn’t until the 92^nd minute that it was over and the Black Stars had done it! The village was loud, people running through cheering with their flags, the speakers came alive and it was an incredible experience, a complete celebration. Game one for Ghana and we were on top! Fun fact to this wonderful story, The coach of Ghana is actually from Serbia so he beat his own homeland!

Well that was game one and there were two more to follow for sure, Australia and Germany. The Australia game landed on the 19^th. This day was very difficult for me. I had attended a funeral for my best friend/mommy here, her aunt(this is something I will write about later but don’t feel appropriate mentioning it in World Cup Fever). The funeral left me very upset so I decided watching the game was not what I was to do that night. Though I didn’t watch the sounds of the village allowed me to understand the turn out of the game. The intense cheering and music when Ghana scorded then the final time being up and just hearing the villagers take a casual walk home, it was either a tie or lose, which I found out early the next morning was a tie.

But the Ghanaian pride did not stop! If anything there were more flags popping up, more playing of “Wavin’ Flag” out of the speakers before bed and the best I would say, the three boys who walked the village, one in a yellow shirt, one in a green shirt and the last in a red shirt. The football fans were anxious, would we qualify, we had to wait our final match results as well as the others.

June 23^rd, Ghana vs. Germany. This was a big one, not only for placement but for pride. I wasn’t feeling well so ended up staying in and found out later we lost 1-0, oh could I hear my dad now... I was surprised when I found out Ghana ended up qualifying because of their amazing first performance and tie! I was also surprised to find out when I called my dad that the diehard Germany fan was cheering for Ghana and asked me why we lost, my jaw absolutely dropped.