Les Lions de la Teranga

Saturday night, I fulfilled several people’s fantasies (Tony, Christopher), if not necessarily my own, by watching the Senegalese national soccer team beat Tanzania in Dakar’s Leopold Senghor Stadium. The final score was 4-0, which was probably a bit disheartening for the Tanzanian team, but it was awfully hard to worry too much about them in the frenzied joy that greeted each of the Lions’ goals. The win means Senegal advances in the qualifying rounds for the 2008 African Cup.

It's safe to say this was a new sporting event experience for me: the crowd was huge (the Stade, which seats 60,000, was at about 90 percent capacity), the lines to get into the stadium were serpentine, and armed guards with riot gear slung over their shoulders checked us through the gates, one by one. But as soon as we (a few U.S. Embassy folks, Peace Corps volunteers, NGO workers, a young Senegalese man and me) got through the first checkpoint, pandemonium ensued – the crowd began running towards the doors, vying for choice seats. Tickets, which are sold for $2 to $20, give you access to specific sections, but the seats themselves are first-come, first-served.

In my initial reluctance to join the intimidating crush of fans trying to force themselves through a tiny gate, again manned by soldiers with huge rifles on their backs, I was the last of my group to make my way inside the stadium. As I finally elbowed my way through the crowd, I saw a kid, maybe 12, apparently trying to use a $2 ticket to get into the $6 section. A soldier grabbed his ticket and started hitting him, hard, on the head, before handcuffing the boy’s arm to the gate. No one seemed perturbed by this, and I thought momentarily about giving the soldier a piece of my mind, but then I realized I was literally staring at the barrel of a gun, and thought better of it.

I found a seat, and blinked in the bright lights ringing the stadium. The crowd was packed onto the concrete ledges that serve as seats, waving Senegalese flags, wearing hats in the national colors of red, yellow and green, and blowing, with great gusto, into plastic whistles. Vendors made their way around the seats, carrying baskets of nuts, loaves of sweet bread and unwieldy canisters of hot coffee. As the game began, the crowd became oddly quiet: no one chatting with their neighbor, or calling out for vendors. All of the stadium’s throbbing energy was tightly focused on the field, where Senegal’s many star players (perhaps most notably the 25-year-old team captain El Hadji Diouf) had returned from their clubs around the world to play, once again, for the home team.

Senegal scored two goals in the first half, both met with an explosion of cheering that lingered long after play resumed, and a flashing message on the otherwise static scoreboard: “BUT… BUT…BUT!” After the first goal, I wondered, “But, what?” By the second, I’d figured out that “but” is the word for “goal.” (It only took me half an hour).

At halftime, the players retired to their locker-rooms, which I can only hope are equipped with toilets that flush, and perhaps even some toilet paper, and scores of men climbed out of their seats and up to the empty top rows of the stadium, where they unfurled their prayer mats and knelt, bowing towards Mecca.

The second half had hardly begun before Senegal scored its third goal, and less than five minutes later, another followed. At this point, the crowd was hysterical with glee, waving their arms in the air, some holding torches spewing pyrotechnic sparks, and others simply jumping up and down. Tanzania came close to scoring several times, but the Senegalese goalkeeper was ready for them.

At the end of the game, fans were congratulating each other, shouting and whistling. As we began the long, slow process of filing out of the stadium and into the melee of cars and people outside, the soldiers were on us again, weaving their way through the crowds and attempting to direct the snarl of traffic. Next to me in the throng, a little boy sat on his father’s shoulders, grinning broadly under the red-green-and-yellow hat  perched, slightly askew, on his head.