Saturday morning, Scrm offered to go to the stadium to get tickets. He advised that we arrive at the stadium between noon and 1 pm. The game started at 3:30. Calum and Scrm negotiated until we would arrive at the stadium at 2:45 while Scrm continued to insist that it was better to go earlier.
As Calum and I walked up the hill to meet Scrm and Fab, I could tell we might be in for trouble. People were piling out of buses and crowds of people were heading up the hill toward the stadium... hm, it's a big stadium and Scrm already got our tickets so I'm sure it's fine. We meet up with Scrm and Fab near the side entrance of the stadium and it is pretty crowded. Calum arranged to meet friends (Paul and Ruth) at the main entrance so we started to walk around the block to the main entrance.
This ended up being about half a mile around. During this time people are literally running past us and the crowd is getting larger and larger as we approach the main entrance. At one point a young man stuck his hand in a side pocket of my purse. I'm not stupid enough to keep anything in a side pocket, especially one that does not fasten close in some way so his efforts were pretty fruitless. Believe the signs though people. It's going to be rough.
At the main entrance it was possible to distinguish a line at some points but there did not seem to be much order. Fab gets in the line as Calum, Scrm and I wait for Paul and Ruth. As we are waiting the crowd gets larger and rowdier. Men are shirtless, shouting, staring, and sweating. Not my favorite combination.
As we approach the line, a police officer may or may not have directed the crowd to break into two lines. Scrm was initially directly in front of us in line. This quickly changed as men continued to cut in front of the muzungus who they could easily ignore protests from. But at this point there are still two or three different lines. That aren't moving.
The next series of events are difficult to chronicle. At some point the lines all merged into one enormous mob of people pushing and shoving one another. A few fights broke out and the police began hitting combatants with batons that looked like wifleball bats as well as very large belts. And then kicked them out of the waiting mob. Scrm has disappeared in the crowd. It's maybe 3:15 now and things are getting tense.
Police were allowing groups of people to move forward and present their tickets. We were not that far forward yet but it did cause mass chaos as people violently shoved forward to try to get ahead. Which is also a really good time to try pick pocketing muzungus. Cool. We recover and Scrm rejoins the group of scared muzungus. Fab has disappeared. *Spoiler: He does not reappear until half time.*
We somehow get into the next group to cross over into what I thought was the ticket checking zone. I only presume this because everyone was holding up their tickets. I refused in fear that people would start shoving again and my center of balance would be compromised by raised appendages.
We got shuffled back into the "normal" mob for what appeared to be no real reason. people are getting more and more restless and physical and the police's only reaction is to continue beating people with wifleball bats and belts. Which, not surprisingly, was not effective in the slightest.
Here is where things get a bit scarey. Someone decided (police or not I have no idea) to let a large group of people through the gate at the same time. People went nuts. Shoving ensued. The man behind me got so excited that he started gyrating violently against my back. Yeap. Best way to spend a Saturday afternoon.
People converged so rapidly that no one could move but everyone was still trying to go forward. Calum lost his glasses at one point and was bent over trying to pick them up. I was behind him and being pushed forward while trying not to fall on top of Calum or crush his glasses. Glasses retained, we continued forward being pushed by the people behind us into the people in front of us which caused the front part of the body to be in front of the feet which were tangled with strangers in a feeling of perpetually falling over. This is all in about 45 seconds. I think.
At some point, we lost Paul and Ruth but there was no way to turn around or try to find them so Calum called Paul when we made it through the gate. The person behind Ruth had stepped on her sandal while pushing her forward and she somehow got swept up in the crowd and ended up at the security booth. We met them there, regained composure, swore a bit, and moved on to enter the seating area.
For all of the madness leading up to the game, sitting in the stadium was pretty cool. I still find it difficult to go to every day places that function in their respective capacities knowing they were once sites of mass killings. This stadium is one of those instances. While watching the game, it was impossible to not think about the people who died there 19 years ago
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