On the Chipolopolo and what it means to go back
In February 2012, the Zambian national football team flew to Libreville, Gabon, to play in the Africa cup of nations final.
this is already remarkable. but here is the detail that changes the entire story:
in april 1993, eighteen members of the zambian national team died when their plane crashed into the atlantic ocean near libreville, gabon.
the same country. the same coastline. nineteen years later.
and they went back. and they won.
i don't know how to write about this without feeling the weight of it. the sheer improbability of it. the way history sometimes arranges itself into something that feels less like coincidence and more like completion.
the 2012 squad was not a team of superstars. they had no drogba. no toure. no player whose name would have been immediately recognisable to a casual european football fan. what they had was each other and a country behind them and — i believe this, even though it cannot be measured — something that felt like obligation. like the nineteen had come this far and deserved to see it finished.
they beat ivory coast on penalties in the final.
and somewhere over the atlantic, i like to think, something was settled.
zambian football is not always pretty. the domestic league is underfunded and the infrastructure is what it is and we have had our share of disappointments on the continental stage since 2012.
but none of that changes what happened in libreville.
none of that changes the fact that a group of zambian men, carrying the names of the dead on their backs, went to the place where their predecessors fell.
and came home champions.
that story belongs to us. and i don't think we tell it enough.
