Football, Tear gas, and donuts

When my friends here told me that we had secured tickets to a World Cup qualifying match in San Pedro Sula (Honduras vs. Trinidad and Tobago), I was absolutely thrilled. Anyone who knows anything about me knows that I love soccer-- I love playing it, I love watching it, I'm planning on marrying Victor Valdes (viva Barca!) and I've been to my share of professional soccer matches. My parents used to deck me out in Everton apparel before I could even walk to take me to games at Goodison park! I was very, very excited to go to this game. So...here's my story.

We piled onto a chicken bus at 6:30am on Saturday morning. A chicken bus, for anyone who doesn't know, is a straight-up, yellow and black school bus. When we began our journey, there were maybe ten people on the bus. Very quickly, however, we realized that 1) we would be stopping every five-ten miles to pick people up, and 2) a LOT of people would be getting on this bus. By the time we were well into our journey, my educated guess is that there were 125 people stuffed into that school bus. There were three people in every seat, and people standing in the aisles. We were all really grossed out because we were getting sweated on and pushed around and we obviously couldn't sit comfortably and there were a lot of really smelly people in there. It took five hours to get to San Pedro Sula from Gracias. Anyone who wants to visit me should probably know that unless you're willing to rent a car, a chicken bus is the only way to get from San Pedro Sula to Gracias.

So okay, we arrived in San Pedro around noon and wandered around for a little while. It was pretty amazing to be in a big city again...I have never been so appreciative of air conditioning, sandwiches, or donuts. We went to the hotel, which was very nice, and met up with the guys who had helped us organize the trip. The climate in San Pedro made me really, really appreciate the cool mountains in which I live!! I didn't realize how hot and humid Honduras is, because the weather here in Gracias is so lovely. But anyway, I digress.

We went to the game three hours early, thinking that should be enough time. It wasn't. There were thousands of crazed fans running around everywhere-- it was complete pandemonium. So the first thing that happened was that there were Zelaya protests happening outside of the stadium, so there were armed guards everywhere. Then, some fans tried to break down one of the gates to the stadium, and the police responded by using tear gas. Yeah... I was tear gassed! It was a pretty ridiculously awful experience. I saw the cloud coming but didn't know what it was, and then one of the guys was yelling, "cover your face! cover your face!" People were running and screaming and crying, and then I felt the gas hit my face. It was pretty horrible, my whole face felt like it was burning and my eyes were watering. A lady came by and gave us all bags of water to squirt on our faces. So my first experience at the Honduras football game was getting tear gassed.

After that happened, we jumped in one of the lines. I don't really know how to describe this line. I was pushed up against the guy in front of me (one of my friends, thank goodness) and my other friend was pushed up behind me. We couldn't move. There were people on either side of me also, people I didn't know. Sometimes the line would move forward, but I had no control over that- I was just carried with it. It was bad enough that my head falls somewhere in the middle of everyone else's back so I couldn't get any fresh air, but I had to keep my hands on my pockets because I was certain that I was going to get pickpocketed. There was just no way to tell whose hand was whose and who was touching me or why. The police were patting down everyone who went in, and they were hand-picking people to get into the stadium. So we stood in that line for about two hours without moving. I started to feel claustrophobic a few times, but I hit my limit when I (and I was not alone in this experience) realized that I was being groped by some old man, and I couldn't even move my hands to defend myself. I got the attention of one of the guys I was with and he got the old guy out of my way, but it was just too much for me. I couldn't breathe, I felt really out of control, we had been standing there for two hours without moving and I kept thinking about the football accident that happened in England in 1985 when all those fans were killed by being crushed against a wall. Anyway, I started crying and I couldn't stop.

One of my friends saw me crying and he was amazing and tried really hard to calm me down ("esta bien Kirsty, tranquile, tranquile") but I couldn't get control of my breathing, I felt like I was having a heart attack or something. So anyway, he was able to get the policemen's attention, and the crowd kind of let me through and then the policeman lifted me over the gate and into the stadium. My ticket was never checked, there was no order whatsoever. It was just complete and utter chaos.

Not long after, my friends made it through too. We were all really shaken up and in shock. One of my friends had a completely horrific and violating experience with a guy in line. Another one of my friends also came into the stadium crying. None of us had ever experienced anything like that before. After we had regrouped a little bit, we tried to get into the seating area, but we couldn't squeeze in. We decided to watch the first half on TVs in the stadium, and to sneak in during halftime.

So we did exactly that! We waited until halftime and then wiggled into the seating area, and we actually made our way all the way down to the very front row. It was an awful lot of unpleasantness, but we did get to watch half of the World Cup qualifying match from the front row of the Honduras stadium. And my students today were very excited to tell me that they saw me on TV! We were crazy, we had bought jerseys and painted our faces and were jumping up and down like crazy, singing the fight song and chanting when Honduras scored (which happened quite a few times!). It was an absolute blast. The energy in the stadium was incredible, everyone was dancing and singing. It was a blast.

Was it worth it? Yeah, I'd say so. Not everyone gets to watch one of those games from the front of a stadium! But getting tear gassed and groped and having a panic attack wasn't cool. Jumping in the hotel pool that night was one of the best experiences I've ever had....chlorine has never felt so cleansing and amazing! We went through an awful lot to watch that game, but we ended up having fun. It was a good experience to have, anyway. We're looking into getting tickets to the Honduras-USA game, which might be a bad idea. Something tells me we might be real targets at that game. I don't know...it's so tempting to just keep trying. The guys said that they have never experienced anything like that before- they said everything was exacerbated by the Zelaya protesters and that the stadium overbooked the tickets so there were just too many people there. Apparently that's not the norm for the games. The next morning we enjoyed our free breakfast, picked up one last donut, and jumped back on the chicken bus for another joyful five hour ride back home.

Overall, it was a crazy weekend and a crazy experience. I am so excited because next weekend we are going to Tela beach for our four day weekend! Just four more school days to go. :)

A few pics from the game:

Pleased fans:



Honduras stadium:



The girls: