I woke about 4 hours after I went to bed, more than a little drowsy from a week of late nights and early mornings due to the presence of the Strohs, visiting family (John actually had his 50th birthday on saturday, a fact I learned after I had purchased tickets to the game). I piled into the car of one of the WBR drivers, a gentleman named Ngoma with roommate and friend Mike. Ngoma is a very sizeable man, easily pushing 3 bills (with a good bit of it muscle) so that he would be most useful if mob violence marred our trip to the Congolese border. Ngoma also has a mercedes benz, a fact that puzzled both Mike and I to no end. Upon entry to the back seat of the vehicle, it became eminently clear which side I would choose to sit. Behind the passanger seat was a wealth of legroom... Behind the driver, trusty Ngoma, no more than two inches seperated the back seat and the back of the front seat. I settled into my seat and nodded of sleep, even as Zambian rap music blared and the broken bass speaker in the trunk shook like a bag of broken glass. I was awoken as Lamick, another WBR employee and our forth and final compatriot stood outside the vehicle. As he opened the rear door on the driver side, I could, even in my early morning state, see the gears turning in his head. He squeezed his legs into the space in front of his seat, eventually settling in with both the legs splayed wide at 45 degrees and a grimace written on his face. I smiled and fell back into my slumber.
I awoke three hours later as we pulled into a gas station to refill and relieve ourselves. The same Zambian rap song pulsed, and the tactful chorus "If I do you, you do me" repeated and repeated. I looked to my right and saw Lamick, legs twitching with a wild look on his face. He quickly bounded out of the car and into the bathroom. I for my part was impressed by the fact that his legs had not atrophied. We loaded back into the car and continued our journey north. Chilibombwe is 6 hours directly north of Lusaka, which is in south central Zambia. Our destination was literally on the border of the Congo in the "copper belt" of the country, where as we neared our destination, mountainous hills of black something rose and passed to our right and left, next to them very industrial complexes of certain sorts unfailingly spewing black smoke. Driving in this country has one constant. The belched exhaust of cars given excessive burden and little care is ubiquitous. On a 6 hour drive it can begin to seem like the natural way of things.
Eventually we approached our target, as part of a slow moving convoy, and began to see Zambians lining the road, ostensibly to evince their hopes for success. An exuberant mood of hope pervaded as we crawled on. Zambians waved flags and scarves and proudly pointed to their national side's jerseys. I became aware of a fact that must have been horrifying mike the entirety of the jaunt, that the "I do you, you do me" song was one of three favored tracks and was being played in a loop. Over and over. Apparently these two men, adults, were fixated, awestruck with the genius of P Squared the artist credited with the inventive track. The only solace I could take was in Lamick's inability to move his legs, a kind of perverse vengence for his off tune humming. Finally we arrived in Chilibombwe, which turned out to be a small copper town, with a very rural populace. The single lane road became more crowded with people and eventually we were ushered into a parking lot. We began to trek down the road, Mike and I conspicuously the only "minzungos" (white people) in eyesight. Vendors attempted to sell us scarves and rum and other things and we indulged at least a few of them, as we both purchased scarves inlaid with Zambian colors (a move we later regretted in the 90 degree heat). As we walked down the road, a honking car parted the sea of people with two policemen impotently admonishing the offending gentleman to reverse his course. The car disappeared out of sight into the crowd and we continued with the pack toward a circular tin structure on the horizon. Suddenly, the honking car burst back upon the scene, parting the crowd as before with honking and reckless speed, however this time the car sported a new hood adornment- one of the police officers. He grasped the hood with both hand as the car reversed at speeds of at least thirty miles an hour. They hit a bump and the gentleman officer was hurled into the air, but he managed to maintain his grip on the hood remain attached to the speeding vehicle as it swerved backwards though the crowd and out of eyesight. Mike and I looked at one another in astonishment.
We finally approached the stadium and looked for our entry. Faulty directions from one of the Security guards had us doing a 360 loop around the tin-walled stadium. Its walls stood around twenty to thirty feet high, and more resembled from the outside a gerry-rigged prison than a football pitch. And gerry-rigged it was, as we saw upon further examination. We arrived a full 2 hours early as our tickets were in general admission so I had a walk about the place, eventually securing my self in the VIP lounge, the only place they served booze in the whole place. After a few Heinekens I returned to see our formerly vacant section filling rapidly with the game scarcely an hour away. I sat down and watched the teams warm up and the excitement build. I heard Zambians talking up their prospects and talking down thier deficiences in a manner that reminded me of Sundays at the Metrodome and summer conversations with certain nameless homers (Cam, Gates?). Thier refrain was a variation on the same theme: "Why not this year??!!" It would be bourne out in the next few hours that this was not going to be the year. Algeria scored on its only two chances while the more athletic and posession oriented Zambians flubbed away chance after chance as the air slowly left the building. Before long fans who I had overheard extolling their new (white) french coach as a savior were calling for his head. One particularily overheated but well dressed gent sitting infront of Mike repeatedly expressed the threatening refrain, "You are stupid and you must die!" We could only hope that such refrains would not be repeated in our direction.
They were not and the Zambian fans, in accepting defeat were very well behaved. That is until they filtered out of the stadium. About 50 paces outside the stadium we saw a man get tossed into the bed of a pick up truck, wholly against his will, and battered by the men occupying the space remorselessly, with kicks and ... open handed slaps, as it happened. Regardless of thier method of attack, he was clearly well on his way to receiving the beating of his life, and as the car began to peel out Mike and I looked at each other in astonishment once again. The sea of people again parted and the car, going well over 50 mph, disappeared. No one made any attempt to help the man, and mostly people stared around disinterestedly. Even our companions seemed unmoved, expressing the sentiment that "he must have done something wrong". The battered gentleman quickly left our minds as the endeavor of extracting ourselves from this entanglement of cars and people and debris again consumed our attention.
Ok thats all for today people as I must rise early, tomorrow I will continue with an exciting description of our trip to the border of the Congo, our experience in a social house and our ride home... which wasnt much different than our ride up.
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