L'Américaine au Cameroun

Cameroun has ten provinces with almost 300 different local languages spoken. There’s the Muslim North, the Christian South and the animist pockets. There are the Anglophone areas and the Francophone areas and the influence of Portuguese, German, British and French colonists. And there is one thing that really unites this country: The Lions.

The Lions are Cameroun’s national soccer team. Everyone follows the Lions. In even the most remote village, folks gather around a battery-powered radio on game day. Most of the star players on the team play club soccer in Europe and fly in for national games. One of the favorite players is named Eto’o; there is a popular song with the refrain “Eto’o, Eto’o!” which can be heard blaring out of bars all over Cameroun. There are cheap green soccer jerseys which are sold in all the markets – in any group of ten little boys, at least three will be wearing a green Lions jersey.

Last month there was a big game against Côte d’Ivoire. I went to Baffoussam to watch the game with another volunteer there. We sat in a bar with a television and radio – both going at once – in her neighborhood. The game started at 4:00; by 3:00 the bar was packed and the audience moved the tables outside to make room for more chairs. A group of boys, with no money to buy a soda and the right to sit inside, crowded in the doorway to watch the game. In the waiting time before the game started, a large man wearing a Cameroonian flag like a cape would stand up occasionally, sing the Cameroonian national anthem or the “Eto’o, Eto’o!” song and try to march around the bar. The room was so full, however, he usually ended up marching to the chair in front of him and then marching in place. When the players finally came out on the field, the entire bar was quiet.

It was a close match; the game was tied up until the end. The Lions ended up breaking the tie with a goal in the last ten minutes of the game. When the Lions scored, the entire bar jumped up, yelling and screaming. Chairs were pushed out of the way to the sides of the room. People spent the last ten minutes alternating between holding their breath when Côte d’Ivoire had control of the ball and dancing when Cameroun had control. When time finally ran out and the Lions had won, everyone jumped up and down, splashing beer in the air and over the others in the bar. Men hugged each other and danced. The large man who had been wearing the flag as a cape held the flag over his head, ran (a little drunkenly, by this point) around the bar and tied the flag to the bottom of the cage holding the television. He started singing the national anthem again and was joined by everyone in the bar.

All of Baffoussam was a great fête that night. Dancing people spilled out of bars and continued dancing down the street. Strangers sat down next to each other in restaurants, congratulating themselves. “Eto’o, Eto’o!” blared out of every building with electricity. Moto drivers raced around the city, Cameroonian flags flapping off the back of their motorcycles, beeping their horns.

The next big game – a World Cup qualifier – was October 9th against Egypt. I don’t know all the details, but teams in the World Cup are decided by points that are awarded each time a team wins. Going into this game, the Lions and Côte d’Ivoire were 21-22. If the Lions won, they would qualify for the World Cup. If they lost or tied, it would be Côte d’Ivoire.

I had to go to Yaoundé last week for a SED steering committee meeting, so I went down early to watch the game in Yaoundé’s national stadium. The game started at 4:00 again, by noon the neighborhood around the stadium was filled with people. A group of us, wearing our green Lions t-shirts, walked over to the stadium around 2:00. We were searched by gendarmes twice and joined the mass of bodies filling into the stadium. Once inside, we found seats, buying 50 CFA pieces of cardboard to place on the muddy concrete.

The stadium was already a full writhing, stomping, cheering green mass. There were a few matching bands scattered around the stadium. I don’t mean anything like the official Lions marching band doing some sort of pre-game show. I mean a group of ten or twelve guys from the same neighborhood who gathered together all the instruments they could find, bought a bunch of tickets and danced in the stands playing music. There was a man in our section who had taken off his shirt, painted an Eto’o jersey on himself and who ran up and down the aisles. People sold sodas, candy, boiled peanuts, roasted peanuts. Two young women walked through the crowd painting the Cameroonian flag on peoples faces. A French camera crew walked along the other side of the chain-link fence separating the stands from the field, filming the crowd.

The announcers began not with the stats of the teams, but with the stats of the countries: European colonizers, dates of independence, political leaders, major exports, and geographic and ethnic diversity. Then the teams came out onto the field for a quick introduction before the players began their warm-ups. First the Egyptian team ran out on the field. Polite clapping all around the stadium. I could see two lonely, tiny white flags unfurl in the sea of green across the way. Next the Cameroonian team: The entire stadium shook with cheers, screaming of “Eto’o, Eto’o,” the music of the marching bands, stomping feet.

The Lions scored a goal within the first fifteen minutes. The entire stadium jumped up, men standing on roofs across the way danced side to side, neighbors in the stands hugged each other, the gendarmes smiled. The team then proceeded to act like they were out on the field having a picnic instead of trying to qualify for the World Cup. The Lions rode on their 1-0 lead for the rest of the first half.

In the second half, Egypt made another attempt at a goal. The Lions’ goalie jumped and reached for the ball, but it bounced off his hands into the net. The stadium was silent; no one moved or made a sound. The two lonely white Egyptian flags waved. The score was tied 1-1; it felt like the entire stadium was holding its’ breath. When we came to just a few minutes left in the game with the score still tied, men started to filter out of the stadium, shaking their heads and muttering “C’est finit. Marde!”

But then the Lions were awarded a penalty kick. Hope spread across the stadium. If the Lions made this shot, they would lead 2-1. If they held onto that lead for the few minutes until the end of the match, they would go to the World Cup.

The Lions missed the penalty kick.

The game was over. People sunk to their seats, holding their heads in their hands. The Lions players fell to the ground and curled in the fetal position. The gendarmes looked for people to harass. Photographers snapped pictures of crying players and fans. The two lonely white flags disappeared quickly. People filled out of the stadium in a large, silent pack.

We stayed that night in the Peace Corps compound, which has a sort of hostel for traveling volunteers. The Peace Corps site in is the Omnisport neighborhood on a small street a few hundred yards up from the intersection in front of the stadium. We bought street food and sat in an Omnisport bar, eating our diner and listening to the room discussing the game. The city was loud outside the bar, but not with the celebration-sounds of the last game against Côte d’Ivoire. Teenage boys looked for reasons to get in fights, stopping to dispute things that normally wouldn’t cause them to slow down. The gendarmes marched up and down the street, semi-automatics strapped across their backs, directing traffic and guarding the 33 Export and Guinness delivery trucks. Mommies sat behind their grilled fish and boiled peanuts, eying the crowded streets. When kids started throwing rocks and bricks at passing buses that were thought to contain the departing Lions, the bartender closed the gates and locked the iron bars over the door. We laughed at being locked inside a bar for our safety.

Later that night the rumors started circulating: Crowds had burned down the house of the player who missed the penalty shot, or maybe of the player’s father. Jacques Chirac placed a telephone call and picked the player to take the penalty shot, causing the Lions to lose. The Lions team had to wear gendarme uniforms and march out of the stadium to escape the angry mobs waiting for their bus.

In many places here in Africa, it’s not religion but football that is the opiate of the masses. The Lions good showing in the 1990 World Cup is credited by some as relieving pressure on President Paul Biya for allowing multi-party elections. So, the way I see it there are two potential good things to come out of this. First, maybe without the World Cup to focus on, energies and attentions can be freed up for other concerns here in Cameroun. And the second is that Côte d’Ivoire, which has been teetering on the brink of civil war for a while now, might benefit from a little opiate, if only enough to channel the building tensions into something more constructive. But whatever happens on the political front, the football front is pretty easy to predict: We’ll be lamenting Cameroun’s missed chance for the World Cup and discussing that penalty kick for at least the next six months. But come 2006 and the beginning of the World Cup, we’ll forget about that long enough to cheer on the Africans.