April 2015

No matter what country football breeds passion.  Aweke invited us to what we thought was a local football match in the newly built stadium on the outskirts of Bahir Dar.  It turns out however that it was an African Cup game equivalent to a Champions League game in Europe. The local side St George was playing Mouloudia Club D’el Eulma an Algerian side.  St George needed to win this, the second leg by 2 clear goals due to losing the first leg in Algeria 1-0.   A passionate crowd of 57,002, that’s 57,000 Ethiopians and us in a temperature of 35c cheered on St George to a 2-1 victory but not enough to go through to the next round.   

The stadium was fantastic or it will be once it is finished, health and safety regulations were not a consideration with rubble and large holes everywhere not dissimilar to the clinic.  The final whistle blew and 57,002 people made their way through a gate no more than 20 feet across with police and batons to keep order, a very scary experience.