.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cI have not been sleeping for four days – I’m so scared to go to sleep,\u201d Okyere told BBC Sport Africa.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cEven today, we had a safe place to sleep. I haven’t closed my eyes from 5am til now.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cWhen someone bangs the door, I wake up because I’m scared. I don’t want to close my eyes and realise this thing is happening again.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nCrying for days<\/h3>\n<\/span><\/span>Priscilla Okyere has been playing international football for Ghana for over a decade<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nOkyere is now in Ankara, Turkey\u2019s capital, after her coach arranged for her and her seven roommates to leave Hatay after the earthquake.<\/span><\/p>\nBut the ordeal left her scarred.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cI was terrified. I cried for days,\u201d she explained.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cI can’t imagine how lucky we were to get out from that situation, because most people couldn’t get out. But we were able to.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nOkyere joined Hatayspor six months ago from Israeli club Tel-Aviv Beersheva.<\/span><\/p>\nLike most people who live in southern Turkey, the club’s players had felt tremors before. So when the earthquake struck in the early hours of Monday, she believed it was normal.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cWe were coming from a game in Istanbul and we weren’t home until around 2am,” she said.<\/span><\/p>\n“We had to shower and then get some sleep. At first, I thought I was dreaming because since we came to Hatay, I experienced (tremors) it two times. Sometimes the building would just shake within 30 seconds and it stops.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cWhen it happened, I thought it was a normal thing but I realised this was much more intense than the previous ones.”<\/span><\/p>\n![\"Priscilla](\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/onesport\/cps\/624\/cpsprodpb\/10070\/production\/_128584656_whatsubject.jpg\")
<\/span><\/span>Priscilla Okyere has been at Hatayspor for six months<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nShe went to check on her team-mates, and then hurried outside as all around her began to crumble.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cWhen I got down, the buildings were just collapsing, and everybody was crying, trying to find shelter,” she said.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cIt was raining heavily outside, and everyone was cold. We were not wearing any jackets – nothing. We had gone outside barefoot.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cWe weren’t even thinking about how cold we were at that moment. What we wanted to think about was how to get our passports.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cWe had to find a shelter in someone’s car for almost five hours before the whole thing calmed down, and then we were able to go back to the house.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nThough badly damaged, the building Okyere and her teammates lived in had not collapsed. But they had to leave the area, and with all public transport suspended, they wandered the streets looking for food.<\/span><\/p>\nThey were immediately concerned that there was no way to get in contact with their families back home, even as news began to filter out to the wider world of the quake.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cThe first thing that came into my mind was my mother, because she’s always worried about where I am always want to know what is going on,\u201d Okyere said.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cBut we couldn’t communicate directly to our family because all the networks were not working.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cBut you could call within Turkey, So I spoke to my agent, and I gave him my mother’s number so he could to talk with her and make sure that everything is okay.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n
![\"Christian](\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/onesport\/cps\/624\/cpsprodpb\/12780\/production\/_128584657_whatsubject.jpg\")