At night or during the afternoon, World Cup attendees in Qatar can hear the voices of the Last Mile Marshals.
They point visitors flooding Doha in the right direction on their search for one of the four metro lines of the city.
The vast majority of them are migrant workers from Kenya and Ghana and they’ve managed to turn the repetitive task into a staple of the World Cup.
“I am really excited about it because I am interacting with people from all walks of life, whom I have never met before, and I am really enjoying it”, Marshall Jerry Kipkoech says.
In the midst of the crowd or seated on high chairs, wearing a giant foam finger, the street marshalls cheerfully give instructions.
A week after the tournament launch, the Last Mile Marshals orders’are now sung out, chanted, repeated and played out on speakers sparking laughs among fans who often join in for the chants and dancing.
“We appreciate their efforts,” Amro Zarqan a fan from Jordan lauds.
“They help people and guide them, despite the difficulties of communicating with all these different nationalities.”
Marshal Abubakar Abbas is the one who came up with this idea to break the monotony and engage with football fans.
“It is stuck in my head”, the 33-year-old confesses smiling. “Even when I sleep at night, I hear metro, metro, metro ringing in my head. I wonder which time I will wake up and go back to work. I am obsessed with this work, because it is work and it is fun and interesting and I love it. ”
The ultimate reward for the Kenyan known as Metro Man came on Friday, the viral sensation warmed up the crowd at the match between England and the USA.
The special guest performance certainly went beyond his wildest dreams.
Source: African News