Go Ghamerica! Yea!

Experiencing the World Cup in Ghana as an American is interesting. The fact that the World Cup is on African soil is no small thing. Football in general is no small thing. When Ghana made it to the last game of the African Cup, we thought a civil war broke out. “Nope, just the game,” I was told.

Let’s be honest people, we’re not really into football. We are so pretentious about our own football, that we are the only ones on the planet that refer to the sport as ‘soccer’. A handful of us PCV’s met in Tamale to watch the first weekend of games together. Someone needed to roam the streets with a face painted with the American flag. We erupted into cheers when the first goal was scored for USA’s first game, until someone goes, “Wait, guys…that was England.” (We may have been here a little too long. Y’all are all starting to look the same.) “Ohhhh,” we all groan in unison, and go back to our beers and burgers.

But I’ll admit, almost two years in Ghana and I got the World Cup bug. You want to see a bunch of Ghanaians going absolutely nuts? Watch the Black Stars whoop Serbia in a Tamale bar. I have no problem finding a crowd to watch the Ghana games with. I almost slept through their second game, until a resounding “gooooooaaaaaal” spread through my usually (almost eerily) quite village, waking me from my afternoon nap. I caught the tail end, thank Allah I didn’t miss that Black Star drowning his shirt in nosebleed. How exciting! Go Ghana!

Finding anyone willing to watch the USA games is a different story. Alhadji felt enough pity on me to let me watch the game on his TV, and he proceeded to take a nap leaving me to watch it by myself. He missed out, that was a good game. Why don’t we have a crazy Slovenia victory dance? Seriously. I’m doing it right now. Hoopah!

Anyway, hope you guys are catching the games. I fear for my life that Ghana and the US will have to play each other. Scary thought. Until then, Go USAna! Good luck tomorrow, both a'yous!