It’s all about football

Ghana is all about football (soccer)… Each village, school, neighborhood and town has a team, and during evenings people go out to local football fields to play. If there is no local game, people disappear into their homes and watch a football championship on their TVs. Stickers of such prominent teams as Chelsea, Real Madrid and Manchester United adorn taxi cabs, and every school kid dreams to be on Ghana’s national Black Stars team. As for me, even though I grew up with football all around me (my father and both brothers would watch the World Cup and would play in their spare time), I was in no way a football expert, or a fan of any particular team. I did, however, knew the famous “Ole-ole-ole” chant.

Living in rural Ghana is definitely different from living in the States. This includes socializing. For example, I purposely did not make any close acquaintance with young nubile men for various reasons: most common one is that being somebody’s “friend” may have led to various sexual innuendo, propositions and uncomfortable situations. I knew some of them through my counterpart, and I would greet them when I had a chance. On their part, they were actually polite enough not to constantly proposition me (as it usually happens every time I go to market town, tro station and any other public place). Some of them I knew through various business transactions (an electrician, a carpenter, couple of taxi drivers) but I would not purposely hang out with them in the evenings, if you catch my drift. Being a girl in Ghana is not easy-o...

But one Sunday morning I overheard that the local football team was playing an away game at a neighboring village. As I was already doing some Grassroots Soccer activities with school kids, the football bug finally let itself known: I’ve decided to go to the game and cheer for “my” team. Besides, being in another village would be a nice break from my site and a market town. After all, you only live once.

So, we piled into a Sprinter mini-bus (while designed for about 20 passengers, we’ve had about 40 people literally squeezed into it) and took off. The players and the fans were singing and chanting throughout our trip along the familiar bush road, potholes and all.

Something changed that day. I became one of the guys. It is a familiar state of mind and place for me in the US where I’ve been one of the guys for years. I admit – this type of attitude was not very helpful for me in the dating department, as I would size guys up not as potential snuggling/kissing partners but as potential running buddies, concert goers or band members. Being a Caucasian female in Ghana created an opposite effect: I could no longer approach guys easily and be friends with them, I literally had to hide from them and their constant propositions. I was no longer perceived as a potential friend who would go to a concert and then grab a beer and discuss music genres and world news; I was perceived as a potential “friend” with all the benefits (minus a concert and a beer!).

But the football team guys were not that bad. First, upon arrival, they included my name into their sport chant, and we danced small-small. Then, we walked around the rival village, and finally, we high-fived each other every time the team scored a goal. Finally, after our team’s victory, we piled up into a mini-bus where the guys continued chanting and singing. In those moments – cheering for the home team, riding the mini-bus back home - I felt a quirky emotion, which does not have a name in the English language. It is something called amae , which roughly translates from Japanese as a “a kind of oceanic joy” or a “feeling of acceptance”. It is quite evasive and fleeting (at least for me here in Ghana), but when it strikes you, you feel all warm and fuzzy inside as you realize: “Aha – I’m being accepted.” Many sports fans and church goers would recognize the amae emotion. So, it finally happened to me as I cheered for “my” team and became one of the guys.