Tears from the heart
Last Friday, I went to see my tyre-fitter friend Gama as I usually do on the eve of every Flames important game. I did that with a feeling that, perhaps, he could lift my spirits ahead of the Ghana encounter with his ever-optimistic jazz.
But I could see the emptiness in his eyes. He had flown the white flag.
As he munched m’memo with a few colleagues with the now popular ‘usipa wa bonya’, Gama made his position clear: “Eeeh zoti tangachinye zigoli zitatu ndi Ghana ndakayika, olo titabwerekera Ronaldo (I doubt if we can beat Ghana, even if we sought the services of Ronaldo)â€
Well that was the jazz from Gama and he was right, after all.
On Saturday, the Flames’ fall from grace was confirmed by their 1-0 loss to Ghana’s Black Stars at Civo Stadium; their spirits battered by this barren campaign, their souls torn apart by the crushing weight of failure and their future doomed by the journey that yielded nothing. It is over for my beloved Flames.
It is back to the dark old days for the Flames, when they used to be perennial armchair viewers of the continent’s biggest football show, when a dance with Africa’s best players on the grand stage only came in their dreams and when successive generations of the nation’s promising stars routinely missed a golden chance to showcase their talents to a wider global audience.
It is back to the old sick days; the days when we were not good enough to win at home, not good enough to score away from home and not good enough to come out with a clean sheet at home.
It is back to the wild days; the days when failure was so much a part of the Flames, back to the sick ‘ole days when we would throw our weight behind other teams and the jazz early next year in pubs will be: ‘Ine ndakwera Zambia’ ‘Man! Ine ndakwera Zimbabwe’ because our boys are not good enough to compete at the continent’s biggest football festival—shame!
It is back to those fears ladies and gentlemen.
As for me, I will not support any team at next year’s tournament; instead, I will just be enjoying m’memo with usipa wa bonya with my good friend Gama. Uloliwe..Uloliwe! Uloliwe wayidudula hi..nang’esiza! [the train is pushing!]
