The BIG match

Oct 11, 2008

Tonight I am going to try my hand at this blogging thing. So far all the posts to our blog have been done by Alice, so I suppose I should do one at least occasionally.

Today was the day of the big match. The football match between the national team, the Malawi Flames vs. the D.R.C. The Democratic Republic of Congo. This was a big deal in Malawi.

Now those who know me know that football holds no interest for me (my standard response when someone starts talking about football is “football is that funny shaped ball that they kick and throw, right?). And oddly enough, even though I live in Nebraska, where virtually everyone is a Cornhusker fan, I am not. Now I don’t dislike football. I just think there is way too much importance attached to it by some people. I know the rules and at least some of the players and the strategies used. I had told people for years that you must experience at least one Nebraska football game in Lincoln. I have gone to several games when Bob Devaney was still coach in the early seventies and I still have fond memories of the noise and the excitement. I have even gone to 72nd and Dodge when Nebraska won a National Title. I thought I had seen it all when it comes to team support. Then I came to Malawi and discovered what football really is. Soccer is so much more……..round.

Now I have been driving around in Blantyre and Limbe for a few weeks now and am starting to feel pretty good about getting around. It is odd driving on the opposite side of the road, but not that big of a deal. What is a big deal is getting used to driving as close to each other as we do here. I mean REAL close! I keep pulling my arm inside the car if we get what I think is too close to oncoming traffic.

Anyway, I thought I felt pretty good about driving here. But today is the day of the big match. And where we were going today took us right past the stadium where the game was being played. It was still over two hours ahead of the game when we started to get close. Now you have to understand, the main modes of transportation are by foot or by minibus. So the traffic is a lot of foot traffic, and a huge amount of minibuses. Now minibuses drive like crazy people on a normal day. But today is the day of the big match, and it seems that as a minibus driver, it is your responsibility to fire up the crowd more than it already is by honking your horn and revving up your engine and hanging out out of the driver’s window or the passenger compartment yelling and waving Malawi flags up to and including 3’x 5’ flags. This does fire up the people if for no other reason than to stay out of the way of the minibuses. With all of this flag waving and hanging out the windows and doors of the minibuses there seems to be less chance to pay attention to the actual driving portion of the job. This causes some problems as you could maybe guess, so to make up for it, they just drive faster. Because after all today was the day of the big game. Everyone else (except me) was driving like that.

So as we are driving past the stadium, Esther pointed out how full the stadium was already. I said yes but look at that end over there, it doesn’t look very full. She said yes people did not like to sit over there too much because that was where the people from Ndirande sit. And I guess they have a tendency to get a little rowdy and get into fights. So people tend to stay away from there, unless of course you like that kind of thing. And right outside of the entrance off of Chipembere Highway (which we were on) it was really crazy. People running across the road, traffic at a standstill, police standing in the middle of the road not doing much of anything that I could tell. It was insane fun! Esther was concerned that something was going to happen and wanted me to roll up all the windows so we didn’t get hurt. But we made it through unscathed.

So we finally get through to Limbe, with no more than a few more than normal close calls, and get our shopping done. And head for home by a different way, (this was after all, the day of the big match). We drop off Esther and head back home to our house. We get home through the normal amount of foot and minibus traffic (most people were at the big game). We get home and Evance had the big game on the radio. I decided that I was going to sit out in our back yard where there was a cool breeze and some nice shade and doze for a while. But the game was on, and EVERYONE was listening to the game. The first point was scored by the D.R.C. and that did not sit well with the folks around here. But Malawi countered it with a score of its own a little while later and the whole Chlobwe Township (where we live) erupted in cheers and whoops and beating on anything they could find. And when a while later they scored again to break the tie it was bedlam once again. When the game ended with the same score, 2-1, things really started hopping. From our house we could look over to the road and could see hundreds of people running in unison chanting. There was dancing in the street. Evance was one of them dancing out in front of our house. At one point Alice said that a big bus went driving past with people standing on top and dancing. It is now about 7pm and things have died down somewhat, but mostly because a lot of people don’t have electricity when it gets dark and people tend to go either home or to someplace with electricity. Wow! I just thought of this. It is 7pm and we did not have blackout tonight. Nice change of pace. And we have water tonight also. It is going to be a good night.

And with that I think I will end this my first entry to our blog. I hope you have enjoyed it.

Ray