My First Soccer Game

Last Sunday began like just about all my other days in San Luis—wake up at 5:30 to the roosters crowing right outside my door after about 9 hours of sleep, eat my daily breakfast of tortillas, beans, and eggs, then lay in a hammock with a cup of coffee for a little bit—however, I knew it would be different. It was game-day.

While the San Luis soccer teams have games every weekend year-round, they are always located in the neighboring communities against teams we have probably played hundreds of time. However, once every year or two we organize a game with a community near the beach as a chance to get out of daily farm-work, play someone new, and hit the waves. Probably more than half the community—all the members of the football team, their families, and quite a few other families that just wanted to go to the beach—loaded onto a bus at 6 am and off we went. Although I’d been practicing with the team every Tuesday and Thursday night for my first five weeks here, for the last few weekends I wasn’t able to make the games because of meetings or other commitments, so had I decided this would be my first appearance with the San Luis squad.

However, after a two-hour ride through the mountains and coffee country of El Salvador, which included two pit stops (one due to flames emerging from the underside of our bus—which ended up worrying me much more than anyone else—and another so the driver could drop off some tamales at his mother’s house) we made it to the beach, Puerte de Acajutla, by 8:30 am. San Luis has three teams, a first, second, and third team, and since I would be playing with the second and first teams, I would be leaving the beach at 12:30 with the rest of the second and first teams to start our games around 2 pm.

The beach itself provided quite the Salvadoran adventure. Although I had visited the beach before in El Salvador, it was my first time at a Salvadoran beach with actual Salvadorans…and it is quite a different experience. First of all, the fact that is wasn’t even 9 am or that we had a soccer game in 4 hours certainly wasn’t going to put a damper on the first vacation in a year or two for my teammates—they proceeded to suck down packs of cigarettes, chug beers, and spike their coconuts with rum. Additionally, I discovered Salvadorans generally don’t know how to swim and are deathly afraid of waves, which is surprising because the farthest you can get from the beach in this country is 3 hours. While I’ll give them the fact that there is definitely a very strong under-toe in all of El Salvador, it was border-line hilarious to see both my whole community sprinting towards their towels and beers whenever a wave came in and the looks of pure shock and disbelief when I ventured in deeper than my knees.

Next, after the adventure at the beach, we departed for the soccer field where we were to play in front of quite a big crowd—not only was half of San Luis there but a large home crowd had turned out to see the strangers from some village out west in the mountains. While our third team had won—setting the bar pretty high—I tried to take it with a grain of salt, since they definitely had quite-a-bit less time to drink before the game.

Within the first 20 minutes of the opening whistle of my game with the second team we were down 3-0 and it was looking pretty ugly. I’m not gonna lie…I was already just praying for the end of the game. Looking back at our goalie, who was continuing to drink whenever the ball wasn’t in his half of the field, just wasn’t giving me the most comforting feeling.

However, in a quick play off a corner quick in a stroke of genius I still don’t really understand or remember, I scored our first goal. Not only did all my teammates—not only drunk but deliriously excited that the gringo had scored—scramble into a dog-pile on top of me, but the crowd went nuts. The home fans were threatening to riot, screaming all sorts of horrible taunts at their own community for not only giving up a goal, but giving up a goal to the white kid who clearly had only been playing soccer for a few weeks, and the San Luis fans were screaming just as loudly because, quite frankly, they were equally shocked and I don’t think they really knew what else to do.

While the “gringo” chants were pretty exciting, the excitement only continued to grow. Over the course of the rest of the first half and the first 30 minutes of the second half, we came all the way back and ended up in a tied game, 4-4, with 10 minutes left. While we ended up losing 5-4 in a very questionable call by the very questionable home town ref who would make Pete Rose or Tim Donaghy look like a saint, my first soccer game proved to be quite the experience. Additionally, while before the game I was undoubtedly the biggest, and probably only, celebrity in San Luis, I’m now fairly sure I’ve shot from B-List to A-List star. More than 5 times, this week alone, I’ve run into people from neighboring communities who come up to me to congratulate me on my first goal; I knew news spreads fast around here about a white person, but I had no idea how fast it spreads about a white person who scores goals.

However, back to the games, after our near-comeback, the first team took the field. I was slated to start the game for the first team and play the first 15 or 20 minutes. That ended up being more than enough. Due to the fact that our first team, which in more sober situations is usually very good, had had another 2 hours to drink while watching the second-team game, and was undoubtedly pushed to drink even more by my goal then our comeback, we ended up losing 7-0. And, if imaginable, it’s actually worse than it sounds. The game was called 20 minutes early when a fight broke out in the stands and half the home team rushed into the crowd to join the melee. Welcome to El Salvadoran weekend soccer games…

In other news from the past week, I planted sugar cane and harvested coffee, both for the first time. I previously had no idea had labor-intensive planting sugar cane was—it involved over 120 other workers, a huge tractor, a 16-wheeler, about 8 carts pulled by teams of 2 oxen, and a pick-up truck for 7 just to plant 3.5 manzanas (1 manzana = 16 tareas, 1 tarea = 435.2 m2; you can do the math if you want, I have no idea how to explain how much a manzana is, but its basically the Salvadoran version of an acre; tareas are another measurement of farm-land they use here). I also had no idea how sweet and tasty coffee beans are when picked fresh off the tree, before being dried, processed, ground, smoked, or whatever it is they do to coffee beans.

In a final note, Happy Halloween! Also, for those of you looking to get a little deeper into Salvadoran culture, today is Dia de Los Muertos. While I think it’s a little inappropriate to wish you a “happy” Dia de Los Muertos, feel free to visit your local cemetery with flowers, candies, and prayers if you so please.