The soccer experience

The Mole bus and traveling madness of last weekend made me decide to take a weekend off from traveling and stay around Accra. St. Pattie’s day was fun. A bunch of people in my program went to Jerry’s, the local bar that we usually go to. Jake met some interesting characters who used to live in the Bronx, and although my friend Brianna and I tried, we did not succeed in convincing the bartenders that red heads drink for free on St. Pattie’s day. Friday I was lazy all day and watched my bootleg season 1 of The West Wing which I have been making my way through during all of my free time here. Saturday I spent studying for the first time since I’ve been here! Tomorrow I have a midterm in Twi which should be interesting. 

Sunday our program organized a bus for a bunch of people to go watch a soccer game in Accra. The city of Kumasi (Kotoka) played Accra (Phobia). Unfortunately Phobia lost. We were in the hot sun all day and the soccer game experience was an interesting one. Small arguments over which team was going to win would come to blows between Ghanaians and overall the scene was just a little too barbaric for my taste. The real fun began when we were leaving the stadium. First, this crazy guy came up to my friend Dan and started pushing him for no apparent reason. A bunch of people grabbed the guy and took him away and apologized to Dan saying that the guy was actually just crazy. This initially for some reason put me on edge.

A few minutes later I felt someone graze my left side. I looked down into my purse and my wallet was gone. I looked up and a group of three or four guys were quickly walking away from our group so I ran after them and shouted that one of them stole my wallet. David, another guy in my program saw one of them stick something in his pants so he pointed to him and said “THIS ONE”. There happened to be a police officer standing right there. The guy dropped my wallet and I ran to pick it up. I looked up and the police officer was slapping the guy, some people were punching him, a few people from the crowd started kicking him, and then the guy threw up. I was a mess because I had just had my wallet picked then watched the guy be beaten to the point of vomiting. I then was dragged to the police headquarters in the stadium where they wanted me to go and give a statement. I told them that I had my wallet back and didn’t want to go all the way to the police station. Some of the people in the crowd were in disbelief that I would just let the guy go free. Jake was also not crazy about just letting the guy go and had previously given the guy a piece of his mind. It just seemed crazy to me to give a statement when the guy had just been beaten and publically humiliated. My wallet had 15 Cedis in it, so about ten US dollars. There were no credit cards, and my phone and camera were still in my purse. It just seemed that whatever punishment in addition to being beaten that this boy was about to receive did not justify the crime of almost stealing 15 Cedis. 

In Ghana it is common to be publicly beaten if you are caught stealing. Two of my friends witnessed this in the first few weeks that we were here. A man was in someone’s room and was caught about to steal something. Even though they found nothing on him from the room he was beaten and all of his things were stolen from him. I understand that people here don’t have much so stealing is a big deal, but to me it was just not worth it to take the incident any further. I am extremely privileged here. I could have given him the 15 Cedis, never thought about it again, and it probably would have bought his food for two or three days. It was strange that I barely felt wronged in any way by the whole ordeal. If someone would steal my wallet at home I would be furious, but here it just seemed like an inevitable occurrence. I will not soon forget the series of events that happened that and how my impulse to blurt out that someone had stolen my wallet ended up causing such brutality.