Counterfeit Shirt Land

Street Sellers on Independence Avenue

Everywhere you go there are the green home shirts of the Zambian national Football team,  also known as the Chipolopolo, meaning "Copper bullets" You can pick them out in front of you, behind your back and out there in your peripheral vision. People will drop what they are doing to talk about the latest result or news, ditches stop being dug and buses are delayed; the Chipolopolo boys come first. The most popular shirt, by some margin, is the quite stylish green shirt with the vertical strip made an almost cult accessory by the success of the Chiopolopolo against the Ivory Coast in the 2013 Africa Cup of Nations, added significance being that it was the anniversary of a tragic air disaster that killed the whole team of the coast of Gabon in 1993. The country, it would not be inaccurate to state, are still in the throes of mourning and celebration at the same time now and a lot of different people get in on the act.

Zambia is counterfeit shirt land. Walking through the city centre one day I counted 13 different versions of the Zambian national football team in a half a mile stretch. Quality, from poor to slightly better but not that good at all and prices, from £2-£10, vary. What they certainly share is the market demand and the speed they fall apart in the wash although there is an element of luck involved. Fortune in Zambia, as elsewhere maybe, evidently scatters her gifts more with abundance than discretion. Everybody it seems wants the Zambian colours, and this gives them the chance. It gives the counterfeiters and sellers the chance to make a living too, so everybody is happy. The group of sellers at the junction of the Great East Road and Independence Avenue a mile east of the city patrol the queues of cars at the traffic lights. If you don't want a shirt, or have one already, they have puppies to, but real ones, not counterfeit. There are so many different copies that whilst I was last there and the new official Nike team jersey was unveiled, even the government, or Football Association to be precise, in a proclaimed attempt to combat the counterfeiters, released their own official counterfeit shirt. They claimed it wasn't a "counterfeit" but an "unbranded product" or something like that, begging the obvious question, I know. It gets to the point that if you want a replica Chipolopolo shirt like the cool kids, then the counterfeit is almost the more genuine article and if you have the official one you stand out like a sore thumb. It's all a bit topsy-turvy. Incidentally, an official Nike football shirt in Zambia costs around £40 or thereabouts, the same as here. The people from the compound, living on £1 a day, go for the counterfeits.