It seemed as though a signal was given at dusk and they came out like the stars. Strolling vendors who had been selling boxes of paper handkerchiefs, car air fresheners and dusty packets of biscuits suddenly had armfuls of yellow and the colour was spreading to the market stalls. And so it moved up the streets.
Women tied them round their heads, motorcyclists precariously slung them over their handlebars, drivers stopped at the side of the road to wedge them in car windows, simultaneously turning up their radios, while young men and women slipped them straight on over their clothes. One size fitted all. Yellow, sleeveless t-shirts, the fabric cheap as a teabag but bright as a butterfly and boasting in black the slogan ”Allez Les Eperviers” — Come on the Hawks. The tiniest of African countries — pencil-thin, French-speaking Togo, just 51km wide at its Atlantic base — was gearing up for the sporting moment of its uneventful history.
Africa’s representatives at the 2006 Fifa World Cup Finals were being decided on Saturday and this little root of a country was making its bid. Not since Haiti landed in the World Cup Finals in 1974 has such an unknown outsider made it thus far.
By Friday night when the T-shirts so suddenly splashed on to the streets of the capital city Lome, Togo’s young football team had already been flown off, preparing for the momentous away game to the Red Devils of Congo in that country’s capital, Brazzaville.
By Saturday Togolese expectations were soaring with their hawks. All Togo needed to achieve a national first in reaching the World Cup Finals was a draw. By lunchtime television stores had sold out and were shut up; an hour or so later every other shack and stall followed suit. TVs and speakers were dragged out into the pavements, people squeezed into bars and restaurants where enterprising men charged a few francs in entrance fee.
For one bar owner, whose TV set went on the blink seven minutes after the 3pm kick-off, that fee was enough to pay for the moped taxi that he leapt on to escape the palm-wine soaked young men who chased him out, baying for his blood.
With a population of five million souls, each born with a life expectancy of 53 years and the likelihood of an annual wage of around $1 580, Togo can be found on most maps with its name hanging outside its borders like a gift tag, too big to fit within its lines.
But in the last year its young team have made a dramatic leap in the Fifa/Coca-Cola world ranking from 99th to 54th, 20 places above Scotland, and on Saturday Togo established itself as one of football’s emerging nations.
In the end, by the time the final whistle could be seen and not heard over the roar on Lome’s streets, the score was 3-2 to Togo.
By then those yellow T-shirts were mud plastered, soaking and clinging to arms and backs and breasts. In a tropical downpour of sheeting rain, in a cacophony of car horns, whistles and human roars, the West African night exploded into a dance of victory. Parties began in the middle of the street. Soon there were at least 5 000 people on the streets.
Abdoulaye Sibawey stood sheltering under his shop’s corrugated metal roof, chuckling and jigging. ”It is the only thing that unites us,” he said. ”Football. Not politics, not women, not money. Football.”
Sibawey has been working punishing hours over the past week; he makes Togolese flags. ”Usually I sell maybe five in a week. Now it’s 50 a day.”
Before Saturday, the best known Togolese was an air hostess called Nicole Coste who had a baby boy with Prince Albert of Monaco, and a tennis player called Yaka-Garonfin Koptigan who was the oldest-ever Davis Cup player at the age of 59. Now Les Eperviers have made their mark.
”Tell the world we are coming!” yelled a flag-draped man, before dancing away through the puddles. ”We are coming to Germany, we are coming!”
They will be joined by three other African countries who have qualified for the first time: Angola, Ivory Coast and Ghana. Three of the continent’s footballing giants, Cameroon, Nigeria and South Africa, have been eliminated.
But Togo’s trail-blazing is no fluke. Their coach is Stephen Keshi, who captained Nigeria in the 1994 World Cup finals. ”Getting to where we are now has not been by luck. We have fought our way,” he said.
In a mud-floored shack at Lome’s voodoo fetish market on Saturday, just before kick-off, Ganyehessou K Calixte had stretched his yellow Hawks T-shirt across his lap. The stalls here hang with the stench of dessicated chameleons, snakes and crocodiles. On offer are rows and rows of hairy monkeys, cat and dog heads and piles of indistinguishable dried animal skins and skulls. Noah’s Ark collided with the ship of death.
Calixte’s business card announces him as a chief ”of the African voodoo force”. Togo is where voodoo began and there is still a following although ”only for good and for health”, says Calixte. He had wavered between making a spell for the team or not — everyone knows the players simply had to urinate on the goalmouths to guarantee success. In the end he fretted that Congo might be up to the same tricks so he cooked up a mix of 41 herbs. They were to be burnt and put in a hyena skin — he is all out of lion skins — to wrap around a wooden figurine.
In the end Les Eperviers did not need Calixte’s charms, the magic was all of their own. And so, through this little man of Africa, the continent gets a chance to prove to a sighing world that it is not just a sum of tragedies. In a football game it showed its spirit, bold, brave and belly-laughing in the rain.
Match report? Sorry, The Observer was in the bar with the TV that broke down. – Guardian Unlimited Â