Tamale

On my way to town in the tro-tro, one of the countless lopsided share taxis. The woman up front next to the driver has a somewhat droopy guinea fowl on her lap and the two women next to me on the back seat hold huge, semicircular aluminium bowls in front of them; one of them full to the brim with mountains of light-yellow, deep-fried yam cakes, the other transporting red slices of watermelon, not piled heedlessly in the bowl but lovingly arranged like petals.

Taking the tro-tro is always exciting and not just for the prior negotiations of the fare, for which probably all white visitors have brought along clever advice from their Lonely Planet travel guides. The respective passengers are exciting, too, and the taxi stops – if it is not full to bursting – whenever someone on the roadside signals that they want a ride.

Actually, the three or four kilometres of seamlessly strung colourful shacks, cottages, sheds and sales booths along the street between the "Ticcs" guesthouse and the city centre are definitively far too spectacular to want to drive them in a car. The streets here are simply more exciting than our monotonous shopping strips. But, this Sunday afternoon it is too hot and too late to take a pleasant stroll down "Bolga Road." There is only one hour until the longed for match between Chelsea and Manchester United and my date with my co-workers is as set as the bet we made. So, I have to take the tro-tro taxi and warm up for my first public viewing in Tamale.

A noisy clump of people is already standing in front of the entryway to the big backyard. A few hundred public viewers press into the yard with loud laughter, swank and hooting, fighting for the best places in front of the surprisingly small flat screen TV attached to a dark corner of the yard. The blue Chelsea jerseys dominate and Ballack and Drogba are obviously the favourites. Only a few red "Rooney" fan shirts peak between the blue. One woman stands to the side back at the edge of the courtyard and I am the only female in the middle of the crowd and, on top of that, one of the few ManU fans. Nonetheless this is hardly of consequence, for Chelsea repeatedly is afloat again, which is celebrated with loud mocking cries to the ManU fans. Every successful pass is acclaimed like a hat trick and of course, not from seats; as soon as excitement spreads, everyone jumps up dancing. But, if an offside or a foul aren’t called, the viewers complain and clamour so loudly that the referee must be able to hear it from afar.

My young colleague Nuruddin Salilu sits next to me with a friend’s two-year-old son parked on his lap. In the midst of all this noise – and of course the plastic South African stadium air horns are part of it, the constant shouts of triumph over amazing tackles, elegant crosses and split-second goalkeeper sensations – in the midst of all this noise the little one falls asleep in a sweat. My colleague in his Ballack jersey neither quiets down nor sits still. Luckily, though, the father comes and fetches the boy shortly before Terry really catapults Chelsea to 1:0. The mood in the stadium could surely not be better than here – singing, dancing, swaggering and glowing in collective happiness à la Tamale. Now, come on, shake hands, my colleagues say consolingly, it was a great match! What’s even greater is how incredibly vibrant and frolicsome watching football can be. It is worlds apart from a Saturday on the sofa.