Diaries of a World Cup reporter: A day at Sealine Beach Desert

Today is crunch time. The Black Stars of Ghana are on the cusp of either progression or elimination at the ongoing FIFA World Cup and the sub-plot as you may already know is all the more interesting.

A Ghana win today will mean Uruguay, the country that caused Ghana and Africa so much pain during the 2010 World Cup in South Africa will be eliminated. Call it destiny or fate, but yea that is what is at stake this evening in Qatar.

I believe I speak for all, or at least the majority of Ghanaians and Africans that it is our collective hope that Ghana will triumph and join Senegal and Morocco in the last 16 stage of the tournament.

Before the game itself, I tried to put together my experience at the Sealine Beach Desert here in Doha. It is one of the many exciting things tourists are encouraged to experience once in this oil-rich country.

The trip to the Sealine Beach Desert was totally unplanned. At least not for that day. That day, my colleague Perez Kwaw and I had planned a trip to Mesaieed, an industrial town in Doha.

There, we had planned to visit some Ghanaians who work for Qatar’s aluminium smelting company. Efo Banks, another Ghanaian resident who has been living here for the last 6 years was our fixer. He arranged the interview for us and also agreed to drive us to and from the place, of course at a fee of 100 Qatari Riyals which converts to about GH 400 cedis.

He arrived on time and drove us up Mesaieed. We had a good interview with the Ghanaian community there and even had a sumptuous lunch there.

It was on our way back that Efo said he had to pick up another set of Ghanaians to the Sealine and pleaded with us that in other not to be late in picking up these Ghanaians we should allow him to pick them up so we all go and have a good time and then later he can go and drop us off.

It was so much of a busy day so why not, we obliged. It turned out to be a masterstroke and we had mad fun.

My plan was to ride on a camel but we arrived a little late and the motorcycle was the next best thing.

We paid 200 Riyals for the two bikes and split the cost among 4 of us. That’s about GH 800 cedis for one hour of fun in the desert and it was money well spent.

Below I captured some of the highlights of the day.

Enjoy!



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Daniel Oduro