"The Beautiful Game"

So went to the season opener of the Uganda Super League (highest level of soccer oh sorry football in the country). SC Villa and KCC were playing. I have never seen a 'high level' game played on such a low level field before.
The whole thing was the Dutch boys (Marijn and Ties who live with Jessica)'s idea and it was a good one. Tons of fun and we managed to pick the winning team (we all were cheering for SC Villa). The cheap seats were singing and dancing away and we were in the medium priced seats (a whole 5000 shilling a ticket - that's about 3 bucks or 3.50) but there was still alot of crowd action around us. There were the required corn snacks (deep fried and salted corn i think), sodas (there was no beer in the stadium) and candies. We were the only mzungus there (though maybe there were a couple in the expensive seats) and there were not a lot of women there period so the three Canadian girls and the two Dutch guys stood out a bit and plus we were a little vocal in ways that apparently Ugandans aren't eg. Christie yelling and Ties hooting (that's the best description I can come up with). But after a little bit the crowd around us got into it too. Thankfully most of the people around us were cheering for Villa too so we didn't have to worry about that. Though it was pretty amusing to see the number of riot police ringing the field. I counted 36 along one side of the field and one goal line.

SC Villa's newest fans, Jessica, Christie, Marijn and Ties

(though apparently Ties can't keep his eyes off the game)

There was a good amount of diving and some really brutal play. I can't say the skill level was ridiculously high. It seemed that passing may be a new concept to most of the players. The field was a mud pit and so it probably wasn't the best idea for teams to have yellow and light blue uniforms. The best part had to be the stretcher guys who were beyond funny - can't say their lifting people onto the stretcher skills were that good , they had big issues trying to figure out who to go to when two players were on the ground and one of them spent most of his time "walking like 5o cent" as Jess put it.... Still awesome fun and there were a couple of really nice goals.

Opening kick-off