The eighth was a holiday—no school even for the Americans(!). The day is hypothetically spent catching up on sleep (See: Immaculate Conception) but the continuation of loud music far into the daytime hours made that impossible for me. Instead, I went to a soccer game. Each department has a team, and ours is called “Junior.” Given the name, the fact that the sponsor right now is a pasta brand whose emblem is a doll (and here, the sponsor’s emblem is ALL over jerseys, the field, etc) and their mascot is an adorable bouncy little shark, at first glance it does not seem the most ferocious. Except don’t be deceived: Barranquilians LOVE their team, and their ferocious loyalty by far makes up for the cute nature of the team emblems.
A few of us and host family members headed over to the stadium, which is on the edge of Soledad, a district here of a similar notoriety as Harlem, or Roxbury. After receiving TWO full patdowns, we climbed into the “Oriental” section, which is the cheapest section. The seats were great in that everyone got full views, but they are not so great in that they face the setting sun. However, due to unexpected providence, a patch of clouds conveniently blocked out the worst of the rays for the majority of the game!
Here, there is an interesting scoring system that if the game is a home game, you receive one less point no matter what. Or something like that. This happens cumulatively, so, due to a long string of scoring events in past games, the logic of which still eludes me, Junior needed only to tie to make the playoffs…but if they lost they were out completely. Needless to say, tensions were high. And when the other team, Chiquo, scored two goals in quick succession during the first half, the mood got ugly. At one point a fight broke out in the adjacent section, and the ongoing bass drums from the two separate field-side bands certainly gave an ominous backbeat to the game. During half time, Junior’s goalie got into a fight in the locker room and was red carded…but fortunately the other team lost a player to a field fight as well, so we played with equal teams for the rest of the game!
Other fun, only-in-Colombia-sorts of things—
The crowd cam! Crowd cams are, of course, popular crowd entertainment devices. I once attended a baseball game where crowd members were implored to pant and bark like dogs. For some reason, those crowd members complied. Here, the crowd cam’s main purpose was legitimately to find the hottest girls it could…and then focus on their most attractive features. Sometimes the women got up and did some sexy dancing for the camera, causing happy excitement in the crowd. Needless to say, most of the breasts were not real. Conversely, the camera also occasionally paused on a less-attractive woman…at which collective groans went up from the male members of the audience. And then there were the few spotted kisses. When the women tried to hide their faces, Tyler’s host dad said to me, “Those are probably not their wives.”
At one point, a rather full beer came sailing down from the top of the section. Now, I’d already been hit with a cup, and there had been some others thrown. But this drink showered enough people that a few guys got up, which turned into half the section standing, pissed at the guy who threw the cup. Here in Barranquilla, the symbol for “cut it out,” is to put two fingers to your throat, as though you’re sticking or shooting yourself in the neck. So combine that with a murderous glare, and multiple that by about fifty people doing this, and I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to be the culpable person.
Fortunately, something exciting happened in the game and attention was distracted, and no fight broke out in our section.
And equally fortunately, Junior tied! Meaning that we didn’t experience ridiculous fights or scenes. Merely someone taking out the firecracker launcher they’d brought in with them and shooting off a series of something that looked like bottle rockets. This was, mind you, only a week after a referee was hit by a firecracker in the face at the beginning of the previous game, where the entire game had to be canceled because of it. But no one seemed to mind…so hey, free fireworks show!
After the game was done we hustled out. Since Junior’s colors are red and white and are striped, and approximately 98 percent of people at the game were dressed in Junior jerseys, we kept hands on each other so as not to be forced into the most difficult game of “Where’s Waldo” ever.
And somehow, we found a bus within 10 minutes, and headed home! All in all, it was a successful sports venture, to be sure.
Where's Waldo?
Stadium at sunset, post-game
