Nanama Keita at Soccer City Stadium

After enduring an 11-hour marathon flight with an overnight stay in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, I arrived at Johannesburg International Airport on Wednesday, June 16, at exactly my scheduled time.

Unlike other passengers who had to rush and collect their luggage after leaving the immigration processing point, I headed for the exit door after getting my passport stamped, having lost my luggage in Bamako where I transited from my native Banjul, Gambia.

Ethiopian Airlines appear to have established a bad reputation for losing passengers’ luggage, but I eventually got mine back, albeit not until after some five days into my stay in South Africa – thanks to my host [Twenty Ten] who had been pestering the airliner to trace the luggage.

As I walked towards the arrival lounge with my hand luggage strapped to my back, I started to feel the amazing World Cup fever in the Rainbow Nation with vuvuzelas and flags all over.

As I approached the arrival lounge exit, I easily traced my name on a plaque held by a waiting driver who had come to pick me up.

‘I am Nanama Keita from Gambia’, I said to the kind-looking man who would later be known to me as Timothy.

After that brief intro, we made our way easily downtown with a first stop at the logistics office, where I was handed some valuable items that were to make my work easier during my stay, including a South African SIM card, a Canon digital camera, 3G flash for internet connection, etc.

I was later accompanied to an apartment situated at central suburb of Johannesburg, where I was to be lodged during my four-week stay. But hey my first night was a bitter nightmare as I battled to cope with the extreme cold weather. Having left my only coat in my missing luggage did not help.

That first night seemed endless and I woke up the next morning facing the same endless battle against the cold. But I knew I had to cope.

A few hours later, I was accompanied to the office of the editorial team in Bryanston, an upper class residential suburb of Johannesburg. This was where the editorial matters of the Twenty Ten project would be discussed and executed under the tutelage of a team of experienced editors headed by Greg Marinovich.

No sooner had I settled down than I was handed my first assignment: the news of a fire outbreak in an improvised Alexandra Township of eastern part of Johannesburg that Twenty Ten had been to just a few days before.

Prior to my trip to South Africa, I was well briefed about Johannesburg: that it’s like every other major city in the world with tons of people, business and fancy cars always on the move. And on my arrival, I was not disappointed.  The bustling international airport, voted the best in Africa two years in a row and the multi-lane highways were just eye-catching, not to mention the continent’s fastest underground train service – “Gautrain”.

However, during my first coverage to Alexandra Township, I was struck by what I saw and heard, and in no time I was shocked to learn of the dramatic divisions between rich and poor in a nation that is teetering between the first and third worlds.

A former Chico’s Ice Cream factory, which illegally housed more than 400 people, was gutted beyond recognition.

The occupants had erected cardboard partitions and formed a second floor from wood to create a highly flammable ‘shanty-town’. People cooked on paraffin stoves, and used candles or illegal electrical connections for light.

Tshiolidzi Thiswana, a mother of two, who watched her belongings go up in flames after narrowly escaping the wild fire with her two-year-old son, daughter and sister, spoke of her distress.

“We managed to escape with slight injuries, but our belongings were all ruined,” she bemoaned. “I only have two children and my sister, and now I have no place to live. Since the morning I have been sitting here helpless and I know I am going to spend the night here as well.”

For Happy Xintlhavani, a 28-year-old who survives by working as a street vendor, nothing is rosy for the people of the deprived community.
She said, while the World Cup extravaganza is in full swing and the slogan ‘Celebrate Africa’s Humanity’ echoing all over South Africa, they are finding little or no humanity at all. ‘Because we are poor, so we have been forgotten’ she sobbed.

From their words, I bet that the country is still recovering from the open wounds of the brutal apartheid, though I didn’t forget that it ended only 16 years ago, 1994 to be precise.

After that tragic moment came my first memorable experience just a few days later. I don’t know about others but for me, watching a live soccer match that features world-class players is definitely a breathtaking experience!

Being in the crowd from hundred of thousands people cheering and chanting is really unforgettable. It was on July 23, at the magnificent Soccer City Stadium in Johannesburg, where Ghana locked horns with Germany in their final Group D match.

This was the first-ever live World Cup match I’ve watched in my seven-year stint as a sports journalist and, despite the bitter cold that descended on Soccer City on that day, I enjoyed every action in the amazing environment dominated by the deafening sounds of the popular vuvuzelas, which has become the symbol of South African football.

Talking of Soccer City, I can comfortably say that South Africa has nothing to envy compared with stadiums such as Santiago Bernabéu or Old Trafford in Spain and England respectively. Beyond the amazing environment you feel inside the stadium, which is one of the ten World Cup venues in the country, the infrastructure is top-notch.

Enough talking about it, but hey this has been a once in-a-life-time experience for me. All thanks to the people of the Twenty Ten project who were generous enough to sponsor my trip to South Africa for a highly challenging, stimulating and incredibly worthwhile training project.