Sun 5th June - The Big Game

Antony got me up early to go for breakfast – a local delicacy of rice balls, fish & beans. Not bad, but I am a bit fed up with rice, what with living in a Chinese restaurant ‘n all. The beer was the best bit, this time one called Gulda, halfway between a Guinness and a lager. Sunday morning, 9.30am, first beer of the day…These people are religious, but not certainly not puritans.

I went and worked a bit then Antony picked me up again for the game. We had paid 100,000 cedi (6 quid) for VIP seats but we’d got there too late and all the best seats were gone. We were left with seats on the lowest level of the VIP area, essentially about a metre above ground-level, with views obstructed by barbed wire, concrete walls, the squad shelters, pointy fences…and women balancing large trays of plantain chips or watermelon slices on their heads J But, for all that, we could still see and it turned out to be a brilliant match: The Burkina-Faso “Stallions” went one up in the first half, then a penalty to the Black Stars (Ghana) brought them level in the second. Finally a great goal gave Ghana the lead. Pandemonium!

When the final whistle went there was first a pitch invasion by the fans, then by the police. But the police just wanted to clear some space for the real VIPs to do some speechifying. I’m not sure that the crowd understood that because they legged it back over these really spikey fences into the stands. I’ve mentioned that the Ghanaians aren’t very tall. Well, the exception is Ghanaian policemen, who could form a very good basketball team. I’d run from them, for sure, tall black guys in severe black paramilitary-style uniforms, armed with long black truncheons (ahem). Running would seem like a good bet.

Strange co-incidence: The Ghanaian coach is a Serbian…this was his first game. In the first half he had put on all the overseas-based players, and they didn’t really look like a team. For the second, he mixed up the local-based and internationals and there was much more cohesion, and two goals. The guys in the crowd near me, who looked like they were having a very big argument, were actually all agreeing with one-another that the internationals get paid too much and so have nothing to play for when with their country.

Anthony then took me out for a few Guinness’s. For some reason they LOVE Guinness here, though it’s actually the stout (at a healthy 7.5%). It’s absolutely everywhere. We met up with some of his friends and went for more booze at another place, the Timber Gardens (because it appears to be situated amongst some timber yards, on the city outskirts. I wanted to try some of the local firewater, something called Akpetesie, made from Palm wine. I couldn’t get it but I did get the palm wine, also quite strong, and smooth (and red) but my lasting association is more Palmolive than Palm wine. Horrible soapy taste.