Go for it Shakira!

I just don’t know how she does it but the way Shakira shakes her hips is amazing, quite phenomenal—it’s like her hips are completely independent of her body.

I happened to be a witness on a chilly evening as the sexy Colombian singer shook her hips in her own inimitable style and sang with her sweet voice at the 2010 Fifa World Cup concert in Johannesburg. Lifting her right hip, high, then pushing it out—all the way to the right and then down—oh boy! I was left mesmerised and, for a while, I thought her man should be lucky fella! And good as my neighbour’s maid is, she cannot just do it the way Shakira does, Oh yes!

Well, Flames midfielder Joseph Kamwendo was also nicknamed ‘Shakira’ by his former Orlando Pirates teammates during his very first training session with the Buccaneers in South Africa in July 2007 and I just wondered how.

Apparently, I learnt that in a typical Shakira style—Joseph fooled his marker when he shook his hips wild and crazy and in a flash of action, the opponent was left mesmerised and for a moment, Pirates players realised they had seen a genius at work and they could not help but give him the pet name—Shakira.

Just a year earlier, Joseph left soccer fans in Denmark a little out of their breath with a right foot curler that left the then FC Copenhagen and Denmark first-choice goaltender Jasper Rassmussen, gasping at thin air and, as expected, the beauty was named the goal of the season.

Prior to his Denmark adventure, Kamwendo also held Zimbabwe soccer fraternity spellbound with his awe-inspiring skills and the proud nation could not resist the temptation of naming him player of the year—the first foreigner to win the award.

For the past couple of years, Joseph appeared to have lost his rhythm that endeared him to the fans as fresh teenage gem here at home, in Zimbabwe, Denmark as well as in the rainbow nation.

And just when many—including yours truly—thought Joseph was finished, just when we were about to start writing obituaries of this once gifted soccer star, having returned home to rejoin his childhood team Mighty Wanderers, he proved us all wrong when he turned on a vintage display and took the fans down memory lane a couple of weeks ago with his fancy footwork and stepovers against Big Bullets in Lilongwe.

Last week, ‘Shakira’ left for Thailand [not Turkey as previously announced by his club] for trials with an undisclosed team. I am hoping that he will make the grade and bring the scarce forex home and he will surely give the lady—who hoisted the placard that read ‘Amuna akusowa chifukwa cha forex, achoke!’—reason to smile.