Just a day after the 2013 Africa Cup of draw that was held in Durban, South Africa last week, I bumped into my good tyre-fitter friend Gama who operates near a filling station in Kanjedza.
He asked me if I watched the draw on TV, to which I said yes and his immediate comment was: “Koma ndiye tataya mwayi bwanji! Chifukwa chikhala timu yathu [Flames] inadutsa, bwenzi tiri mu gulu la Ghana lija [we lost an opportunity because had we qualified, we would have been drawn in the group that has Ghana].
As is often the case, he gave me reason to laugh when he went on saying: “Ndipo tagwa nayo bwanji, chifukwa akuti kupita ma ‘stout’ ambiri kukawoneratu. [he meant ‘scouts’.] Mwinanso Gaba [Gabadinho] anakapeza mwayi, kusiyana ndikumadya bonya mu Chilobwemu, shaaa!â€
Well, that was the gospel according to my ever jovial friend Gama. But our technical frailties aside, it was going to be a tall order for my beloved Flames to cause an upset against Ghana and so as expected, we crashed.
While the gulf in class is so huge, did we really expect our boys to sweat blood for the cause of their country when they were promised a meagre K100 000 [about $330] incentive each had they qualified against an opponent motivated by a $10 000 [about K3.2 million] reward each for the same task?
Ladies and gentlemen, what is K100 000 in these hard economic times? It is not even enough to buy usipa wa bonya relish for three months, yet we expected our boys to give out something extra in the name of national duty?
Football is a game of egos and a better motivated ego is likely to give out the best. So, probably while Ghana’s Andre ‘Dede’ Ayew was planning to play out of his skin so that he could buy a diamond necklace for his fiance on the eve of the game with the $10 000 incentive, a few kilometres away, my poor friend Joseph ‘Shakira’ Kamwendo should have probably been thinking of how many buckets of bonya he could buy from Limbe Market with the K100 000 incentive that they were promised. Sad, isn’t it ladies and gentlemen?
AOB: Congratulations to my colleague little Gomezgani Zakazaka on graduating with a BA in Journalism. Shaa! Koma kuvuta! Lo! To God be the glory!Uloliwe.. Uloliwe wayidudula hi..Nang’esiza! [The train is pushing!] .
