RARELY, HAS SO MUCH, FOR SO MANY DEPEND ON SO FEW 

SHARUKO ON SATURDAY
THEY knew the road trip was going to take them to a place and time where their emotions would be severely tested by gory images of an apocalyptic world they had seen in some horror movies before, but which had now been brought out of fiction and into reality by the sheer brute power of nature.

A hurricane had decimated the American city of New Orleans, its fury powered by a toxic combination of rampaging winds in excess of 280km/hour and devastating storms, killing more than 2 000 people, displacing millions and leaving a trail of destruction worth US$125 billion.

Only twice before, in recorded history, had a hurricane of such immense power smashed onto the American coastline — the Labour Day hurricane in 1935 and Hurricane Camille in 1969.

Music had long stopped in New Orleans, silenced by the raw power of nature by the time American journalist Michael Silver and his friend Duece McAllister arrived in New Orleans, the very city that gave jazz to the world, where the legendary Louis Armstrong was born.

Three Salvation Army rescue workers, including the driver of the car, provided company for the duo, and came handy in helping clear some of the security check points on the way into the city where officers were trying to clamp down on the lawlessness, including looting, sparked by the disaster.

McAllister was a running back for the American football team based in New Orleans, and he was returning to the city where he plied his trade to survey the wreckage of a place that had been reduced into a ghost town and was now barely recognisable from what it has been before tragedy hit.

Hurricane Katrina struck in August 2005, another powerful Beast from the East which slammed into the Gulf Coast, crushing everything in its path, battering the American mainland and providing another powerful and tragic reminder to humanity that we remain at the mercy of Mother Nature.

“The two of us were quiet and contemplative, reeling from two days’ worth of chilling conversations with battered Hurricane Katrina survivors, and bracing ourselves for the disturbing images we were sure to witness,’’ Silver wrote about their journey into New Orleans.

Our driver, Major Mark Woodcock, gestured towards the truck. ‘You see what it’s hauling?’’’ he asked. “We looked back at the semi and simultaneously gasped. ‘Yeah,’ Woodcock said. ‘Those are coffins.’

“In the immediate aftermath of one of the worst natural disasters in US history, McAllister and I experienced a dizzying gamut of emotions that, 10 years later, remain vivid and indelible — fear, anguish, helplessness, anger, sadness, confusion, empathy, bewilderment.’’

For Silver and McAllister, that journey into New Orleans was also a pilgrimage of discovery, with the duo surprised to find some survivors of that tragedy whose battered spirits were being cheered by a game, American football.

“In the process, McAllister and I gained insight into just how terrifying the experience had been for those who endured it, and against all logic, we came to view the sport responsible for placing us there in an entirely new light,’’ Silver wrote.

“The stories we heard from survivors were haunting, but not entirely unexpected. WHAT BLEW US AWAY, HOWEVER, WAS THE WAY SOME OF THEM CLUNG TO FOOTBALL IN THEIR TIME OF DISTRESS.’

SOMEHOW THE TEAM IS CALLED SAINTS AND IT PROVIDED A RAINBOW OF HOPE

The irony, it turns out, was that the team these survivors of Katrina were banking on to cheer their shattered spirits was largely considered a joke of the NFL, the top-flight league in American football, itself a multi-billion dollar industry.

And for a good reason too.

It was, at that time, the worst team in the American NFL, the laughing stock and the whipping boys of the league, an institution that had never won the Super Bowl — the ultimate prize in the league — since the team’s establishment in 1967.

Every worst possible NFL record belonged to this team, a sporting franchise which many considered to be there just to make up the numbers, one that was never part of the conversation when people talked about winners.

Somehow, by some coincidence, the team is called the Saints, the New Orleans Saints, a name that stands for virtue, for holiness, for redemption, for hope, everything good you can ever think of. And, it was this team, despite all its history of failure, which as strange as it now sounds today — which somehow was providing these people of New Orleans with hope in the wake of the damage inflicted by Katrina, by the time Silver and McAllister arrived in this city.

Call it a mystery, or whatever, but for me it’s again another powerful reminder that, when it comes to sport, strong bonds can be created in mysterious ways which humans have failed to find a way of explaining and understanding why it’s always this way.

Just five years after Katrina struck, the Saints transformed themselves into a team that found its way at Super Bowl XLIV, The glitzy NFL’s deciding match, what we call a final in football and cricket, against the Indianapolis Colts at the Sun Life Stadium at Miami Gardens in Florida.

From being a group of misfits who had repeatedly conspired to misfire, year after year, season after season since their formation in 1967, the Saints were now just one win away from claiming the greatest prize in their sport.

Suddenly, the City of New Orleans, still reeling from the disaster inflicted by Katrina, was now just one win away from celebrating its first Super Bowl triumph.

And, millions of Americans didn’t only tune in to watch, but embraced the Saints as their team, with the television ratings for Super Bowl XLIV, the highest for any US television programme, sports or otherwise, in history.

The spike in the audience numbers was boosted, of course, by an army of millions of sympathisers who wanted to see these Saints win Super Bowl XLIV because, in their eyes and hearts, such a triumph would be a shining symbol and beautiful representation, of the city’s resurgence from the hell of Katrina.

And amid scenes of exploding emotions, the Saints delivered a landmark performance to write a triumphant tale like none before in this game, and took the Super Bowl home to a city that badly needed such a success story to help it heal the wounds inflicted by Katrina.

“Standing on the podium at Miami’s Sun Life Stadium and clutching American football’s greatest prize, the New Orleans Saints owner, Tom Benson, found the appropriate words. ‘We’re back!’ he yelled,’’ Paolo Bandini wrote in The Guardian newspaper of the United Kingdom.

“Benson was speaking not just for his team, but for the whole city of New Orleans.

“Five years on from Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans is still working to undo some of the damage caused by flooding, but the people who live there are now back on their feet.

“For them, a 31-17 win over the Indianapolis Colts in Super Bowl XLIV was symbolic of that fact and deeply cathartic.’’

AFTER CYCLONE IDAI, LET’S PRAY FOR OUR WARRIORS TO FLY LIKE THOSE SAINTS

The horror which Silver and McAllister witnessed that day in New Orleans, shortly after Hurricane Katrina struck — the truckloads of coffins, a ruined city which now looked like a town demolished by a nuclear bomb, death, desperation and destruction — is something we have been witnessing in the eastern highlands of our country all week.

Cylone Idai, which first tore into Mozambique before pushing into one of the most beautiful parts of our country, killing hundreds of people in both countries, and leaving thousands stranded, has been labelled by the United Nations as probably the worst such disaster to hit the southern hemisphere.

And, there are widespread fears that what has played out this week, those haunting images of the dead, the destruction, is just a preview of the real catastrophe that will emerge when rescue workers find ways to reach the isolated places where many people remain unaccounted for.

In such trying times, when a nation is in mourning, when our proud identity as Zimbabweans supersedes our minor differences as individuals, when we feel for others more than we feel for ourselves, we show our true colours, the beautiful ones that bind as together, not the ugly ones that divide us.

And, it’s in such depressing times like these that sports heroes — just like the way the Saints helped New Orleans recover from the horror of Hurricane Katrina — find themselves carrying the heavy load of providing their cities and their nations with a beautiful success story to cheer deflated spirits.

The Zambians found a way to do it seven years ago when on their first return to Libreville, where a generation of their finest footballers had perished in that plane crash in 1993, Chipolopolo transformed that Gabonese city into a cathedral for their greatest triumph by winning the 2012 AFCON final.

Today, in Lusaka, when you talk about Libreville, it’s no longer about the darkness of the tragedy of ’93, but also a reminder of the glory of a time they became kings of Africa with their amazing triumph there, helping them heal the wounds of that plane crash.

Didier Drogba captained his country to the final of the 2006 and 2012 AFCON finals, on both occasions losing to Egypt and Zambia, both defeats coming via the penalty shootout lottery, and also guided his Elephants to the World Cup finals and, for some time, they were ranked the best team in Africa.

But he says his biggest achievement was uniting his country, divided by a military conflict that killed a lot of people and had virtually divided it into the north and the south.

As captain, Drogba even demanded that their 2008 AFCON qualifier against Madagascar be played in the then rebel capital of Bouake, so that the people there could feel a sense of belonging to Côte d’Ivoire.

“I have won many trophies in my time,” Drogba told BBC Sport. “But nothing will ever top helping win the battle for peace in my country. I am so proud because today in the Ivory Coast, we do not need a piece of silverware to celebrate.”

I believe in God despite all my failings as a human being, despite all the sins I might have committed, despite all my shortcomings, despite everything I should have done right, but ended up doing wrong.

And, when I read such miracles like what happened to the people of New Orleans, how their faith in their football team, despite its reputation as a bunch of losers, came to pass and healed their broken city, my faith in God is amplified. That’s why, as we mourn the colleagues we lost to Cyclone Idai, as we search for the missing ones, as we help those who were displaced, as we ask questions why this had to happen to us, I believe these Warriors have a massive responsibility — just like the New Orleans Saints before them — to provide a result tomorrow that will cheer our spirits.

It’s a responsibility these Warriors should embrace, it’s a mission they should complete because they have a number of examples to draw their inspiration from — after all, the Zambians are just across the Zambezi.

Today, in New Zealand, the country is finding comfort in the haka, the Maori battle cry that is the symbol of the All Blacks, the greatest rugby team in the world, the pride of this island nation, as they deal with the slaughter of 50 people by a mad gunman.

We have abused this generation of Warriors for a long time, we denied them a chance to play in the World Cup qualifiers, and on Thursday some madman even decided to lock them out of the very stadium specifically built for this team, denying them a chance to train.

Any argument trying to sanitise that horrible action, trying to find reason in that madness, trying to justify it — even if ZIFA owed billions of dollars in unpaid dues to the stadium management — is a gospel of insanity because this is the Warriors home, they own it because of who they are, and who they represent.

Even this arrangement, in which they pay for using their home is dubious, at best, and madness at worst. But, for all our abuse of these boys, they have always rebounded from all that, two years ago they ended our 11-year wait for a return to the AFCON finals, and they proudly took their place in Gabon as the only team from Southern Africa at that show.

COSAFA was their breakthrough, Gabon was to show the continent they had come of age and tomorrow’s game is for their country, for the pain and tragedy inflicted by Idai, and that’s all that matters for them to be our saints.

Never, in the history of these Warriors, has so much, for so many, depended on so few.

To God Be The Glory!

Come on Warriors!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Khamaldinhoooooooooooooooooooo!

Text Feedback — 0772545199

WhatsApp — 0772545199

Email — [email protected]; [email protected]

You can also interact with me on  Twitter — @Chakariboy, Facebook, Instagram — sharukor or the authoritative ZTV live football magazine programme, GamePlan, where I join the legendary Charles “CNN’’ Mabika and producer, Craig “Master Craig’’ Katsande, every Wednesday night at 9.45 pm

 

You Might Also Like

Comments

Take our Survey

We value your opinion! Take a moment to complete our survey