A journey of memories

If you want to be a failure and never be rebuked or chastised, it makes sense to become an athlete. You are involved in a prestigious tournament and you come home empty handed, yet in the midst of your failure, you are assured that there is always next time. Thus, you can rest on your laurels and wait for next time. Such is the case in Malawi; and such was the case with our athletes who went to India recently.

They flew across rivers and oceans, over soaring mountains and above throngs of humanity. Their mission was simple and straightforward: to compete in the commonwealth games that took place in New Delhi.

Yet, they did not only go there to simply have their faces beamed on television, but to come back home with gold, silver or even bronze medals, if circumstances did not completely favour them. But they returned home empty handed. For an anthology of 44 athletes, 37 officials and one team doctor, this appears to be too much embarrassment.

Their horrible failure cannot be overshadowed by illusory comments of individuals who always desire to cushion failure in soothing words that only have the potential of aggravating matters.

Be open and tell them the truth: they have humiliated the nation, and there is nothing beyond that. They are failures in all practical applications of the term, for if they were not, we would be singing at least one song of victory, even if it were a faint one.

We would congratulate them and invite them to a cocktail party somewhere in the comfort of our peaceful hotels and tell them to relax after a hectic voyage to the top, or at least somewhere near the top.

But our athletes chose to see things from different points of view; they desired to bring us nothing, to show us nothing and to promise us nothing. A bronze medal would have promised a silver one in the next encounter while a silver one would have heralded gold next time. But the absence of these two accolades clearly tells us that hope in the athletes should not keep us company.

Any position out of the ‘countable’ range might not make a lot of sense. The queens came back home embracing the same position that they achieved during the previous games. But, does the position matter now when they were not counted as winners?

Those who took the first, second and third positions are the ones who were counted as victors. At least, this is what the medals they got imply.

The queens indeed put up a spirited performance as some would argue, but the fruits of a spirited performance should be victory. They tried their best indeed, but trying is nothing more than a shadow which moves together with its source; it has never been known to become a human being. It will forever remain a shadow and trying will forever remain trying, even in the face of moving miracles.

For our netball team, one cannot avoid asking why it still entertains aging fellows whose energy and passion cannot remain the same with the passage of time. They are indeed experienced, but experience in this case has shown that it does not always result into victory.

Why can’t the energetic young ones take over and take the team forward?

Of course, all the sections that went to the Asian country deserve no mercy. Even though mercy is often greater than justice, let truth be told that we did not expect our representatives in India to return home the way they went.

There even is temptation to bash the comment made by Head of Delegation to the games Haxon Chapasa who said: “I hope we will bag some medals in the next games.” If next time were a genuine excuse for not making it now, then failure would be non-existent.

Chapasa should just have come out in the open to admit that they failed. The next thing would be to devise mechanisms that would ameliorate the situation. Otherwise, being satisfied with our athletes’ failure is no less than telling them to keep it up.

Even Youth Development and Sports Minister Lucious Kanyumba warned critics against making bad comments over the poor performance by the athletes. Perhaps, the minister needs to know that the mere fact that the athletes did not come back home with any medal is enough to warrant a barrage of bad comments from different commentators.

If bad comments cannot come in, then obviously we will be congratulating them; but how do you congratulate someone who has not impressed? We cannot keep on telling our athletes to keep trying. We need to tell them the truth, and this truth is that their performance was miserable.

A whooping amount in excess of K28 million was spent on the fruitless quest for prestige. But perhaps, the most memorable thing to the athletes together with the whole delegation is that they at least had a chance to see some of the places they had never seen before. They interacted with individuals they had never interacted with before. That alone might be an honour, an achievement, a memory.

The journey itself, of course, was one of great memories. They might be fond memories to the athletes, but to us who were never part of that trip, they are bitter memories. They are sour memories of embarrassment and humiliation imposed onto us by the dismal performances of our athletes.