What happens when torrential rains start during a soccer game and a couple thousand Nigerians want to be in the covered seating area holding a couple hundred people -- complete mayhem. Tonight we attended the FIFA U-17 World Cup match between Columbia and Iran. Near halftime the rains started. Everyone wanted to be under cover and the 'security' folks were easily overwhelmed to do much to prevent it. It was rather surreal to see a mass of people coming towards you in full flight. Check out the video --> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8R03cHiiqM
True to their colors, the Nigerians were quite polite as there was no pu
shing or shoving, and it was a 'nice chaos' if there is such a thing. Although cramped like canned sardines (Henry will appreciate this analogy as he packed sardines in his luggage as his emergency food), it actually became entertaining and we had a chance to talk to a lot of locals. All very nice and wanted to make sure we were fine. Most asked for my Facebook name so we could keep in touch -- those that have been nudging me to join the social networking bandwagon will appreciate the irony. It is surprising how prevalent FB (see, I am learning some of the lingo) is in the area with the Internet bandwidth being so low (basically like dial-up speeds of twelve years ago with worse quality). The other requests I got were for travel visas to come to the states like I carried them around to hand out with my business cards. In another twist, our colleague Hugo (from Mexico) was interviewed by Columbian TV before the match. As near as we can tell, not being able to find any fans from Columbia they were happy to find a Spanish speaker.
For the record, the game ended in a soggy 0-0 tie.
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