Football at the national Stadium

Today was quite the event! Botswana and Mozambique were scheduled to meet in the first round of qualifying for Southern Africa. Going into the game it was already nearly decided that Botswana was unlikely to move on. In fact, I heard that in order to advance Botswana would need approximately a seven goal differential to advance, in addition to a lot of help from some other teams. In addition, it is no secret that Botswana is simply not very good at football (remember football here refers to soccer, they use both words here which is very confusing to me).
Nonetheless us international students were SO excited to go and see the game!

(Some international students dancing with some Batswana at the game)

At about 11am I walked over to the Botswana Football Association (BFA) administration building and bought one ticket in the "Panda," for 30 Pula ($5). At least I think it was called the Panda, on the ticket it said "East Stands" but my roommates said it was called the Panda. Apparently the Panda is were the roudiest of the roudy sit (a huge overstatement), AWESOME! Across the way in the West stands (50 Pula) was where the calm fans sat under shade.
With the prior knowledge that the stadium was dry (turned out this was kind of an understatment as barely any concessions were available) some of the other international students decided to "pre-game a little" I did not partake.
At about 3:30 we decided it was about time to head over to the stadium. The National Stadium is located about a ten minute walk from our dorms and about 30 feet from the North gate to campus. Upon arriving we had no idea where to go.

(The interior of the Stadium with Gaborone in the Background)

Eventually, under the leadership of Matt, we simply flung ourselves at a gate and hoped they let us in. As we handed the ticket taker our tickets they informed us that this wasn't the right place but Matt got the impression we could get through to where we wanted to be from there. Turns out we couldn't. Unfortuately we hadn't been left with a ticket stub to prove we weren't where we had intended to be. In fact, the reason we had been admitted was because we were in the only seats in the stadium less exspensive than the East Stands. Finally we convinced a police officer to aid us in getting to where we had wanted to be.
As the game began, around 4:30, it had many of the ceremonial trappings of any professional sporting event, including a police marching band (that looked to be fashioned after the british, big surprise there *rolls eyes*).
I had not approached the game with overly high expectations in terms of the quality of the game which turned out to be a very good thing. About ten minutes in the Zebras (Botswana's team) allowed a sloppy goal in and that was all it took. The rest of the game was honestly rather mundane but no less sloppy.

(Matt and Mathew look on)

The pinnacle of said sloppiness being when the Zebra's keeper attempted to boot a ball down field but abruptly had the ball stolen right from his foot. He launched, immediately, into full on defense mode chasing the Mozambique player all the way to the sideline. It was absolutely remarkable that there was not a score as a result.
What is more of note is that as we were sitting on the East side of the stadium we were staring into the sun all afternoon, and it was a rather warm afternoon (89 degrees but I swear it felt warmer than that).

(Me with the Stadium in the background)

Overall, I am pleased with the experience. It was fun to watch some sports and neat experience to visit the national stadium.

That's all for now,
Love,
Tommy