On Friday 28 February 2020, I was booked on a flight from Birmingham to Paris via Air France, departing at 14:45. I had taken a day off and spent all morning preparing for the concert and making sure that everything was in place. At 11 am I called the taxi to take me to the train station where I was meeting with a friend for our train ride to Birmingham Airport. While on our way to the airport, I discovered that I had left me passport in a little travel bag so despite the meticulous preparation, I had done the most stupid thing. Even my friend was amazed that I had such a school boy error but there was no time to cry over it……..I proceeded to the airport and rang my madam, who agreed to leave work, go home, get the passport and bring it to me. Friday was a dreadful day in UK because of storm Jorge. Trains were delayed because of signals and traffic was very bad so I knew that I would miss the flight.
At the airport, I went to the desk, told my story and was advised to ring the airline and arrange a change of plans. I did that and had to pay a fee to change the ticket and was put on the next flight. My missus had gone back home, found the passport and drove to Sandwell and Dudley train station to catch a train to Birmingham International Airport and deliver my passport. Meanwhile, I went into a bar and drowned my sorrows with a few pints of lager while I waited for her to arrive. After, getting the passport, I went to check in and proceeded through airport security and while airside, I went again for another pint as I was an hour early. The flight was called in and proceeded to the gates to board the flight to Paris. On board, there were a few people wearing masks and I though they looked like proper idiots. However, when I got to Paris, I found out that there were many more people wearing masks there than I had seen in UK so fair play to them.
When I got to Paris, I disembarked on terminal 2 and took a train line B to Paris. A friend of mine who had travelled from London rang me to warm me that there were riots and to avoid going through Paris Gare de Lyon because of a fire (
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-51682230). Anyway, I had no intention to go to that train station because my hotel was at Bercy Village, so I was going to take Metro line 14 from Chatelet and get off at Cour Saint-Emilion. The journey proceeded without incident and when I got to Cour Saint-Emilion, I saw a few black people asking for directions to Bercy and a few of them speaking in Lingala. I went to my hotel, took a shower, got dressed and off I went to Accors Arena where the concert was. The walking distance was about 900m from Pullman Hotel and while walking there, I noticed a huge police presence and as I approached the venue, there was a group of Congolese people, mostly men singing a version of JB’s Souverain azali champion and there were burnt cars, motorbikes and debris everywhere. My initial thought was that you wouldn’t do that kind of thing in UK and still maintain your status……NEVER.
As I approached the venue to meet up with my colleagues, there was a ring of steel around the venue with police holding guns and dogs. To go through you had to show the ticket or else not allowed. A lot of people had no tickets and were asking if I had spares and of course I did not have any. Tickets were checked at the gates and we had to walk a distance towards the venue. We arrived at the venue just in time for Fally starting and that was about 8:40pm. The place was packed to the brim and everyone was good natured and clearly enjoying their time there. I would estimate that the number of 20,000 is accurate. The crowd was into it and were singing back and taking part. The sound was amazing, and we could hear everything however, we were on the floor and not in the stands so we could not get to the front, so we had to use the screen to see properly. To be fair I am not a huge fan of Fally and do not really know his songs, but he played the heavily marketed Eloko and Ecole which was abruptly cut short because of time.
The concert finished off with a mind blowing sebene called telephone or something like that. When this sebene started, the whole place erupted into dance, but some people started leaving and that was about 11:30pm. So, in all, Fally played for about 2hrs or so but that seemed like 20 minutes to me, however, everyone seemed to have been satisfied and there were no incidents from people leaving the venue. I met up with other Zimbabweans outside the venue and we had photos taken with our flag and afterwards left to VRP night club in Champs Elysees to continue with our fun. The price to get into the night club was 30 Euros which I thought was absolutely bonkers. We organised ourselves instead and booked a table for 3 and paid 180 Euros for the table and a bottle of JD. We left the club at 7 am but the music was just whack………they were playing Loi and all the old songs from Ivory Coast and old RnB music. I didn’t enjoy it that much but had to force myself to get into it or spend the whole night sulking.
Anyway, my verdict for the concert is that it was a huge success and people supported him despite the detractors and haters trying to ruin it. However, for me on a personal level, it was a partial fail because I travelled that far but didn’t get to see much cause he didn’t play for long. I took some photos of the concert and videos but will not post because they are quite personal, however, there are videos all over the internet for this concert which I am sure many of you have viewed already.
