November 2024. Zimbabwe's national rugby team, the Sables, crossed nine time zones for an international test against Korea. They played to a stadium that was polite, orderly and mostly silent, except for one block of stands that did not stop moving for a full eighty minutes.
That block was us.
Families, students, workers, long-term residents, Zimbabweans from across Korea turned out at Seoul Stadium in green, white, yellow and red, sang the national anthem loud enough for the players to hear it across the pitch, and answered every home chant with a louder one. One of the Sables coaches said afterwards he had not seen travelling support like it in years.
When the final whistle went, the community did not go home. A post-match gathering stretched on well into the evening, food, stories, photographs with the squad, and the rare privilege of being in the same room as the national team.
Zimbabwe rugby travels. So does the Zimbabwean community in Korea. When one of them is on the field, the other is in the stand.
