The final whistle blew, and fans spilled onto the field. They scaled fences and jumped from the tops of walls and pushed through gates. They wanted to feel the turf under their feet, to steal an up-close glimpse of the players, to place a hand on a sweaty jersey. I felt a rush of panic. This was not my first soccer match in Africa, and I knew how quickly things could turn chaotic. I recalled stories of crushed spectators and mobs setting out to avenge losses. Not just in Africa, of course. Only a few days before, at a championship game in Athens in late May, police had teargassed hostile ticket holders. Now here I was, caught on the edge of a pitch in the surge of the crowd, desperate to find an escape.

Some 300 soldiers struggled to contain the celebration. The Ivory Coast national team—les Éléphants—had just defeated Madagascar, 5–0, in a qualifying game for the 2008 African Cup of Nations. The victory had been nearly a foregone conclusion. Many of the Ivorian players are well-paid members of professional squads in Europe, and standing next to the overmatched Madagascar team, the Elephants looked like giants. The 25,000 fans in Bouaké Stadium had roared at every pass and shot, and they'd gone wild with euphoria at each goal scored. But victory, per se, wasn't so much the point. You didn't have to look hard to see that there was much more at stake than just a soccer match. On this day, the Beautiful Game had reunited a country.

Several dozen of the soldiers formed a wall around Didier Drogba, the Ivorian captain and star striker who plays professionally for Chelsea in the English Premier League. Drogba finished this past season at the top of the league with 20 goals and in March was named African Footballer of the Year. But here in Bouaké, in the aftermath of his team's resounding win, he was being praised for other, loftier reasons. The soldiers managed to hold back the screaming fans, but they were also a little starstruck themselves. Several exchanged high fives with Drogba as they protected him; some even pulled out their cell phones to snap a quick photo. To everyone in the stadium, and to millions of others across Ivory Coast, Didier Drogba had just ended his country's civil war.

For nearly five years, Ivory Coast had been divided in two: rebel-held North, government-loyal South. But on a tour of the country in March, Drogba stunned his fellow Ivorians by proposing that the Madagascar game be played in Bouaké, the capital of the rebellion. North and South, unable to reconcile their differences through battle or peace talks, would set aside their guns and come together for a soccer game. And Drogba, already an international star, would become, in the eyes of Ivorians, something of a deity.

"When I saw Drogba say that on television, I got goose bumps," Christophe Diecket, an official with the Ivory Coast Football Federation, told me. "My wife cried. The people on TV cried. We Ivorians, we had this abscess, a sickness, but we had no way to lance it to get better. It couldn't have been done by anyone else. Only Drogba. He's the one who has cured us of this war."

The soldiers—all from the rebel army—hustled Drogba and his teammates off the field and guided the joyous masses to the exits. Up in the stands, 200 government troops looked on. They'd been invited to help symbolize the reunification of the country, and they cheered and sang with the rebel-friendly crowd throughout the day. It was the first time since the start of the war that the loyalist army had been in the rebel capital; the first time in nearly five years that the two sides had been face-to-face in a non-hostile setting.

"When I got here I felt apprehension and hope all at once," Diecket said. "There've been too many deaths—my brother lost his whole family. We know it's time to put it all behind us. Five years is not a lot compared to other African wars, but it's still too much. In life, sometimes you fall down. Drogba and the Elephants have helped us get back up. Now we can't fall down again."

I hoped he was right, but I was feeling no small amount of apprehension myself. I had come to Ivory Coast as a Peace Corps volunteer in 1995 and lived in a village northwest of Bouaké that was now in rebel hands. I spent two years there, learning French, building latrines, and talking endlessly about clean drinking water, giving little thought to the wars and civil strife that prevailed in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and elsewhere in West Africa at the time. Meanwhile, with the economy faltering, tensions were on the rise in Ivory Coast as well. On Christmas Eve 1999, two and a half years after I left, the country suffered its first coup d'état.

Unrest became the rule. There was another coup attempt in September 2002. It failed, but the country spiraled into civil war. I moved back to Ivory Coast and covered the conflict for the Associated Press for more than a year. In December 2003 I left the A.P. and relocated to New York, but I have continued to travel to Ivory Coast to write about the conflict and have watched the country become another African cliché, ruled by guns. No one is sure how many people have died in the war, but the number surely stretches well into the thousands. I've reported on mass killings, interviewed corrupt politicians, and been stopped at countless roadblocks by troops armed with machetes and AK-47s. A French journalist I knew was shot in the head in 2003 by a government police officer.

It had been a long time since I'd thought of Ivory Coast as the tranquil place of my Peace Corps days. But Drogba was intent on changing everything. It began with the run-up to the 2006 World Cup. As the Elephants fought their way to the top of their qualifying group, Drogba led his teammates in prayer following each game, asking for peace back home. When the team officially qualified in October 2005, it sparked days of celebrations and dancing in the streets. People in government-controlled Abidjan, the country's economic capital and its largest city, telephoned bars in rebel territory to order cases of beer for revelers who couldn't afford them. The team's players were from all over Ivory Coast, and their cooperative spirit was hailed by Ivorians as an example of how the warring sides should reconcile.

Drogba, the charismatic captain, became an icon. Young Ivorian men dressed like him, favoring sleeveless T-shirts and hair gel. Women swooned over his classic runway looks—broad shoulders, high cheekbones, sculpted jaw. Musicians wrote songs about him, and billboards with his likeness called on people to display their Drogbacité—their Drogba-ness. One-liter bottles of Bock, a locally brewed beer, became known as "Drogbas," a nod to the star's imposing physical presence. And whenever Chelsea played a game, life in Ivory Coast came nearly to a halt, as everyone watched the flamboyant striker dash across the screens of their flickering television sets.

I arrived in Abidjan a few days before the matchup with Madagascar and got a room at the Golf Hotel, built along the Ébrié Lagoon on the eastern edge of town. Drogba and the rest of his teammates were staying there as well, and they were unfailingly generous to their many fans, posing for pictures and signing autographs in the lobby. On my first morning I attended a team practice. Several Ivorian journalists were there, and when they learned that a Vanity Fair reporter had flown in from New York for the game, they rushed over and shoved microphones and a television camera in my face. I had made the evening news.

Prime Minister Guillaume Soro offered to fly me to Bouaké on his personal jet for the game. I had known Soro since my days with the A.P. at the start of the war, when he emerged as the leader of the rebellion. Earlier this year, shortly after Drogba was named the top player in Africa, Soro had signed a peace accord with Laurent Gbagbo, Ivory Coast's president. It was the latest truce in a line of many that had gone unheeded over the years—but by installing Soro as prime minister, this agreement held more promise.

Doubts, however, remained. Cargo trucks hauling goods on the main road connecting Abidjan and Bouaké were still forced to pay bribes at government and rebel checkpoints alike. Rebel soldiers held on to their weapons and maintained their patrols in the North. And although Soro was the country's new prime minister, he retained his title as secretary general of the rebellion. (On June 29, four weeks after I flew to Bouaké with Soro, his plane was attacked by rocket fire upon landing at the rebel capital's airport. The prime minister survived, but at least three people traveling on the plane with him were killed. Reports speculated that the attack was launched by factions within the rebellion who were unhappy that Soro had joined President Gbagbo's government.)

There were 10 of us on Soro's Gulfstream III, and once we reached cruising altitude, he called me up front for a chat. Power has endowed the prime minister with a paunch and a thickness in the face that do little to hide his youth; he's only 35. But his eyes are aloof beyond his years, and he long ago mastered the political art of elliptical speech.

"The fact that this game is being played in the capital of what was called the rebellion in Ivory Coast is a symbol of the unity that Ivorians have found anew and of our national reconciliation," Soro said, buckled into his oversize white-leather seat. "This game is being played at a time when the chief of the former rebellion occupies the second-highest responsibility in the executive branch of the Ivorian government. This is no banal or trivial thing."

As for Drogba, "he is a national hero," Soro said. "From north to south, from east to west, all Ivorians are proud of him. I'd even say that all of Africa is proud of him. This game is taking place because Drogba came to Bouaké to consecrate reconciliation and reinforce peace."

At the Bouaké airport the prime minister was welcomed by the rebellion's marching band and military guard. He then met with top rebel soldiers and officials to discuss preparations for the game. I checked into the Ran Hotel, which had been shuttered by the war and stripped of most of its functional parts but was now being restored. There was a pile of concrete rubble in the entryway, movers were unpacking new sofas and tables for the reception area, and electricians were hooking up shiny stand-alone air-conditioning units in the lobby. The waitstaff scrubbed countertops and stocked refrigerators with soda and beer. A sign in the lounge read, from now on, it is forbidden to sit in the bar without drinking.

I went to check on the stadium, which the government was overhauling for the game at a cost of more than $700,000. As rebel troops practiced their security routine, I got a tour of the refurbished V.I.P. lounges and locker rooms, all chilled by freshly installed air conditioners. A lone man pushed a gas-powered lawn mower over the field, which had been planted with new grass only a few weeks before. The skies darkened just as he finished his work, then opened into a powerful rainstorm.

Up in the stands, I came across Clement Vehgu, a 45-year-old former housepainter. He sat among a pile of chair parts, which he'd been hired to put together for $3 a day. "It's the first real job I've had since the war started," he told me. The conflict had chased his wife and two sons to a small town near the border with Ghana. "I see them sometimes. Once a year or so," he said.

I looked out over the flooded field as the wind and rain knocked over equipment and tore banners from walls. "Don't worry," said Vehgu, smiling as he screwed a seat cushion to its frame and water ran down his face. "The rain will stop, and tomorrow the sun will shine. Drogba will play. And thanks to him, our country will reunite."

[#image: /photos/54cc02a2998d4de83ba4709d]|||Fans follow Didier Drogba and the national soccer team from the Bouaké airport to the stadium on June 3, 2007. Enlarge this photo.|||

Sure enough, the sun was out the next day as I stood on the tarmac at the airport, watching the team's plane taxi to a halt. The players climbed aboard two buses, and a raucous parade followed them on the five-mile drive to the stadium. People sat on the roofs of trucks and cars, drove motorcycles and mo-peds, and sprinted along in the roadside grass. They sang, screamed, blew whistles, and waved Ivorian flags. Drogba sat in the back-left seat of the second bus and smiled as fans tried to touch his window, reaching from the tops of minivans as the procession rolled along at about 30 miles an hour. Rebel troops tried to control the bedlam, flanking the buses in four-by-fours from the Leopard and Anaconda brigades. As we neared the stadium, I turned to my driver and said it was a miracle that there hadn't been an accident. Suddenly a soldier fell from the camouflage-painted truck in front of us and tumbled across the pavement, his gun clacking along as he rolled. We swerved hard to miss him. Then a second soldier fell, and we braked, turned, missed him too, and pulled into the stadium parking lot.

Rebel bodyguards escorted Prime Minister Soro into the stadium, but his official salute was given by the Republican Guard, a branch of the government army in charge of ceremonies for the president, who was in Libya on business. At midfield before the game, Drogba presented Soro with a special pair of soccer cleats that had the prime minister's name, the game and date, and the words together for peace painted on them. When the national anthem began and the crowd thundered out the words in unison, Drogba closed his eyes and placed his right hand over his heart. The goalkeeper stood next to him, his eyes welling up as he sang.

I remember watching the World Cup when I was young and marveling at Diego Maradona and the furious passion of the players and fans. But it wasn't until I saw kids playing soccer in my Peace Corps village—barefoot, on grassless fields, with anything that might roll or bounce a bit—that I began to understand the game and its impact. As I stood on the edge of the Bouaké pitch and watched Salomon Kalou score the game's first goal in the 18th minute with a header off a perfect cross, I couldn't help but join the cheering. Kalou, who is 21 years old and from a government-loyal town in the South, was born around the same time as the kids I used to watch play in my village. Somehow that fact, in that instant, convinced me that the war really might be over.

Drogba scored the fifth and last goal with a few minutes left in the game. The stadium exploded in celebration, and several fans jumped the fence near him and sprinted along the sidelines before being caught by security forces. Once time had expired and Drogba and his teammates had been escorted from the field, I climbed into the stands to wait out the crowd. I found Geoffrey Baillet, the spokesman for the Ivorian minister of sports, leaning on a rail, watching the scene. "We, the politicians, we went to the best universities; we're the intellectuals, the supposed leaders of the country," he said. "But when it came to making peace, we failed. It's a group of soccer players that brought us together. Didier Drogba came from nothing. Now he's a worldwide star and a hero for us. He's done a great thing for his country."

Madagascar deserved praise as well, Baillet said. "They could have refused to play here. But they told us they were our brothers, and wanted to help reunite our country.… This was no mere game. When I saw the government troops here in Bouaké, saluting the prime minister, it brought tears to my eyes."

I was back in Abidjan the next day. The front-page headline of the country's main newspaper read, five goals to erase five years of war. Another declared, drogba brings bouaké back to life. A few players were hanging around the Golf Hotel, but most of them had checked out and were staying with family and friends in town. Drogba, meanwhile, had a couple days to relax before a festival in his honor in Guibéroua, a town near his father's village, located about 185 miles northwest of Abidjan. Drogba has never lived there; he was born in Abidjan and moved to Europe with his uncle when he was very young. He hadn't even visited the village in more than 15 years.

On the morning of the festival, shortly after nine, Drogba drove up to the front of the Golf Hotel in his dark-blue Porsche Cayenne S.U.V. I had been worried that I might not get a chance to talk to him; my flight back to New York was that night. I followed him down a hallway and tried to get his attention, but he was busy on his cell phone. So I ran back to the lobby and had my driver park behind the Porsche, ready to go. When Drogba returned to his car, he was still lost in his phone conversation, so I tried the back door of his Porsche. It was open. I got in. If he didn't want me there, I figured, he'd kick me out.

Drogba got in, started the car, and we sped off. He wore frayed jeans, a crisp white shirt, sunglasses, and a black baseball cap, worn backward, with a sequined skull and the words love kills slowly painted on the bill. He spent much of the ride on his phone. Traffic in Abidjan was heavy, and a couple of times, while we were stopped, children knocked on the car windows to beg or to try to sell us tissues or a newspaper. When they peered inside and saw Drogba, their eyes would grow wide, and they'd jump up and down, shouting to their friends. He'd give them a wave, then pull off into oncoming traffic to get ahead of the congestion.

We were headed for the airport. President Gbagbo had offered his helicopter for the trip to the village, but over the weekend 22 passengers, most of them officials with the Togo soccer team, had been killed in a helicopter crash in nearby Sierra Leone. Drogba, having heard that, turned down the president's offer. We'd be taking the presidential jet instead.

[#image: /photos/54cc02a20a5930502f5f5e77]|||Didier Drogba, in white shirt, with a village elder in Drogba's father's village, near Guibéroua, in western Ivory Coast, on June 6, 2007. Enlarge this photo.|||

We arrived at the airport's V.I.P. terminal and made our way through the lounge and out onto the tarmac. About a dozen soldiers and security personnel followed us, trying to shake Drogba's hand or take his picture along the way. The pilots and flight attendants came clambering down the ramp to greet him as well. I sidestepped the crowd and walked up the steps and through the plane's door. We were in the air five minutes later. The jet, a Fokker 100, had about 60 seats. I was one of seven passengers. Drogba was in the presidential suite, and most of the rest of us were in the secondary suite, just behind him. The 45 seats in the rear were empty.

What would have been a four-hour drive was a 40-minute flight. We touched down in Daloa, a medium-size town in the heart of cocoa and coffee country in western Ivory Coast. A presidential convoy awaited us—two motorcycles, a military truck, two Mercedes sedans, and a Mercedes S.U.V. Drogba got in the S.U.V. and I got in one of the sedans, a sleek black model with dark-tinted windows. On the seat next to me was a pile of letters stamped "Personal and Confidential" and addressed to the president of the country.

It took us an hour to drive the 65 miles to Guibéroua. Several hundred people blocked the road just outside of town, surrounding our vehicles and shouting Drogba's name. It was only a glimpse of what was to come. Over the next four hours, Drogba was mobbed and praised and sung to and offered gifts and cheered by about 5,000 people. One woman ran up to me, breathless after shaking his hand, exclaiming that she'd just seen God. Nearly everyone I met claimed to be a member of his family.

We were back on the plane shortly before sunset, and as we climbed above the clouds, Drogba waved me up to his seat. We talked briefly about the festival, but soon the conversation shifted to the war and the game in Bouaké. "It was the best thing that's ever happened to me," he said. "It was more than soccer. To see everyone come together like that, only for a game. It shows how soccer can unite people. Sports in general can do this. Maybe only sports."

He went on. "We, the Elephants, all we did was our duty as soccer players, our obligation as Ivorians. We wanted Ivorians to share our dream and see it realized—the return of peace to Ivory Coast. The most moving thing was the national anthem. All the stadium was singing and it was the first time that the two armed forces were together, face-to-face. That was the best moment of my last several weeks."

He said he was relieved that he finally scored at the end of the match. "But our objective was to win the game and give joy to the people of Bouaké and Ivory Coast," he said. "Now we're on the path to peace. That's what is most important. And we want to show all Ivorians, especially the youth, that if this process can grow and thrive, we'll all win."

Drogba offered me a soda and a sandwich. He looked tired, so I thanked him for the interview and the flight, congratulated him on his efforts to reunite his country, and went back to my seat. We landed in Abidjan shortly before seven. My driver met me as I got off the plane and drove me over to the main airport, where I checked in to my Air France flight back to New York. Security was light—another sign that the country might really be on the mend. Earlier, I had spoken to one of the airport's chiefs of police, a man I'd had to bribe from time to time over the years to keep from getting harassed by his colleagues as I came and went to report on the conflict.

He asked about my stay in Bouaké. "It was an incredible thing to see," I told him. "They say the war is really over."

"Yes," he said. "That's what they say."

Austin Merrill's writing on Africa has appeared in The New Republic, Wired, The New York Observer, Tin House, and elsewhere.