"Hey, I like you. Wanna get married?" "Sorry, I m trying to watch the match. Maybe later."

Yesterday I went to watch the U17 game Germany against Argentina at the National Stadium in Abuja. Too bad we lost, doesn't look good for our team now. We are pretty much out. We still stand a tiny theoretical chance, but let's just be realistic. I think it must have been the weather - at least partially. Coming from the German winter into this climate to play a game at 4pm while it is around 35 degrees makes for a temperature difference of 30 degrees compared to temperatures back home. (Maybe it was also the fact that it was amazingly easy to separate our players from the ball once they got it, the problem of really bad passing and the bad positional play in the defense, but I really want to blame it on the weather).

The game in itself wasn't too spectacular. Being in an basically empty stadium that fits 70.000 people was interesting. Having seats in the "VIP lounge", thus being really close to the field was nice. Being allowed to leave work early to watch a football game was just cool. Compared to my first experience with football in Nigeria (I watched the world cup qualifier Nigeria vs. Tunisia live, it was pretty much the exact opposite of yesterday's relaxed afternoon...) this time things went down much more smoothly. I wonder whether it has anything to do with the fact that my friend from the German Embassy organized the tickets and that we were all dressed in office clothes, coming straight from work, thus looking like a bunch of important white people. It might also have to do with the fact that the stadium was basically empty. Especially during the first half you could pretty much count the people that were there. Following African standards of timing, during the second half (about an hour after the official start of the game) quite a few more people had found their way into the stadium.

Being away from home for a while now, I have to admit that it made me proud to hear the German National Anthem and for the three minutes that it lasted I was a proud little German girl. For me that is a big deal, I usually don't feel very patriotic or have a strong sense of my nationality - I am one of these people that has been successfully indoctrinated that being German is nothing to be proud of, on the contrary: even today being German stands for all the harm and evil that has been done in the name of this our nation. I know that this is not entirely true, but unconsciously I do feel guilty being German. Enough on the lack of German national pride, back to the important things in life: football.

The support bases for both teams were rather limited. In the VIP lounge there were some German fans, I think mainly children of the German employees of Julius Berger or diplomats. Then it was a bunch of other expats (like me and my friends) and a group of Argentina supporters (I guess they were also employees of the Argentinean embassy). Our team had some Nigerian supporters though, a small group of Nigerians had brought their own (kind of huge) German flag, and were cheering for our team. To reciprocate I bought a Nigerian flag to demonstrate my sympathy (but let's be honest, I was actually kind of hoping Nigeria would lose their game against Honduras, so we could still make it into the next round...)

During half time we went inside the VIP lounge were we managed to grab a drink (there was supposed to be food, but even though there basically weren't any people there wasn't enough). Some guy in a wheelchair who had been staring at me ever since we tried to enter the stadium in the most disrespectful manner comes up to "talk" to me. It's funny, when guys come to "talk" to you they don't even give a damn about what you might say. They want to be "your very good friend", and they want to get your number. They don't really care how you are doing or what you are doing in Nigeria, the only information they are interested in is your name (if you are lucky) and your phone number. So that old and very ugly guy (I am sorry, but he really wasn't pretty) was totally ignoring what I was saying, he only started listening when I lied to him that I didn't have a phone (which in Nigeria is like "wow, you don't have a PHONE??" - here everyone has at least two different ones, that are answered no matter what. In the cinema, at work (during meetings), while you are talking to people, ... No matter what, you answer your phone.) I was lucky that some girls came up to talk to me, they are interns for an NGO as well, so I could turn around and engage very actively in another conversation. I thought I had successfully made clear that I really wasn't interested to the guy, I thought turning around and ignoring him henceforth would be enough, but apparently that was not as much of a clear sign of rejection as I would have thought. While I was talking to the other girls he engages one of my (male) friends in a conversation, letting him know that he would really like to marry me. After we had talked for about 30 seconds, in which he hadn't even listened to me at all.

It happens to me that guys "want to be my very good friends" when they see me on the street. Whenever I wait for a taxi somewhere I can be sure that some guy comes up to talk to me. When I walk somewhere (something that is seen as very weird in Nigeria, if you are going somewhere, you drive or at least take a taxi) some car will stop next to me to offer me a ride. Several others will just shout "hey baby", "hi sexy", etc. I am Oyinbo after all, that pretty much makes you a hot commodity around here. But the wheelchair guy was just extreme. I had to let him know that I was not exactly interested, using my friend as a courier again. One would think that this sort of rejection would have its effect. Unfortunately I did not. When the game was over and we were waiting outside for everyone to assemble to go back to Maitama, he comes up to me again. "My friend, I hope you enjoyed the game" (Not even waiting for a reply) "I really like you, do you need a ride?". I really try to avoid being impolite, but that was just too much. I decided to be a stuck up Oyinbo, saying "No", turned around, and ignored his presence until we all left.

The game was fun after all, the marriage thing by now is part of my everyday life, and I met really cool people yesterday. I even saw the Nigerian national U17 team walk by. Not too bad for an average Tuesday.