The End is Nigh

Up and at ‘em. One more real challenge ahead of us: Zim border crossing. The distance from Francistown to the border is only about 80 km, and we thought that since everything had been prepared and people were waiting for us the trip and crossing would be easy.  Its amazing how stupid we are that we keep falling for the same trap. Remember TIA – This Is Africa. Anything that can go wrong does, nothing is easy and one should expand the time required to do a task by at least three.  As we left the hotel the local fire department were racing off to a call and gave us a courtesy blast on their bull horn, and we were away. We got to the Botswana border , had the papers stamped, passports inspected and went through. It is maybe half a mile of no-man’s land to the Zim border post and we pulled in confident and full of bravado; after all we were the salvation right. Wrong. The man from the clearing company was there to greet us and we parked the trucks outside the office. We paid for our entry visas and it was interesting that this was the first time that most of us saw carbon paper in use in many years. We were shuttled very efficiently from one window to another, filled out forms, went back, had the visas issued, haad them stamped and we were ready to roll. (For some reason it reminded me of the Officer Opie scene in Alice’s Restaurant. ) The trucks were not so ready. There were hitches, discussions, fees and payments and we sat for nearly four hours while Peter in his stalwart way knocked over one hurdle after another. 

Since we had plenty of time we were walking around the post just watching this hive of activity. It is amazing how high the stuff on top of a bus can be piled. My guess is that it can add the height of at least another bus. Every nook and crannie on the inside is jammed with a variety of living things, and sometimes at customs the inhabitants of these vehicles have to unload everything for inspection. Johnnie sat mesmerized for a long while watching the process of repacking a baggage trailer after one of these disgorgements. He was totally fascinated. 

Les, Allan and I were more interested in the impound lot that we found. When importing a car to Zim one has to pay duty of 100% of the value of the vehicle. The lot was full of vehicles whose one time owners couldn’t afford the tax and had abandoned them there. Now we couldn’t take photographs of this but there was a Bentley there, several Mercedes, BMW’s Audi’s and other luxury cars. There were also trucks including a large refrigerator truck, and they were all sitting in the sun, tires slowly deflating, waiting for the periodic auction when one can bid on them and bring them into the country duty paid. Some had clearly been there for a couple of months, and others just days but they had all been forfeited. 

Eventually we got word that the papers that we needed were being stamped, and so we mounted our trusty steeds with documents in hand and drove to the boom. Allan who was in the front truck thought that the police and military guys there looked very friendly and so he took their picture. It was like a bomb had gone off. They came running up to the truck, told him to get out, bring his pass port with him and told Peter that they were taking him to their little adjacent office. They took him inside then brought him out and were all crowded around him looking at his camera and gesticulating vigorously. He was standing in the middle of them with a smile on his face as we drove up in the second truck. It looked to us like they were having a friendly spirited discussion, so Steve and I got down, took out our cameras and took pictures of Allan with his new friends. Wow. They came screaming over to us asking why we were talking pictures, why we had not obtained their consent, and didn’t we know that this was a breach of security rules. Had we misread the situation or what? They looked at the pictures on our cameras, and initially told me to delete everything, but as they looked and saw pictures of my nephew and his girlfriend, of animals and scenery they relented and were happy with just deleting the ones of them.  Lesson Learned!

From there the drive to Bulawayo was uneventful, but I thought that a couple of things were interesting. There were roadblocks every so often. For the most part we were just waved through, but the average person in a car was systematically examined and in some cases had to pay tolls. The second thing is that the roads were in pretty bad shape and I think that in order to protect them and cargo, the trucks that go through are huge, many of them thirty wheelers, so that the load can be spread.

We arrived in Bulawayo and were met by Peter’s cousin, who took us to the ice cream store to buy Choc99’s, a throwback to when we were kids. It’s a soft serv cone with a Cadbury’s flake in the center and they were a big treat back then. They were also 10c and now they are about $4. Talk about inflation. We then stopped in at the Bulawayo fire department. I was really starting to feel like a roving ambassador.  We were certainly rising in our own estimation.  The equipment there was terrible, as bad as we could imagine and we were amazed that it ran at all. These guys eyes lit up when they saw what We were doing, and they asked if they could keep one of the machines, only partly in jest. From there we went to John Lobels house to unpack, unwind and get a taste of what it must have been like in the “old days”. The house is beautiful and right in the living room is a rebuilt Indian Scout motorcycle, my guess is circa 1920. Later that evening about 30 of Peters family and old friend came over, and a wonderful chef named Mark cooked us burgers, chicken tikka and salads. It was fantastic meeting a few of the remaining white families in Bulawayo. If you really want to go back to the days of Rhodesia and the war listen to this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0ftw4bQq6g

One last note. I know you dont see enough pictures and les told me that some of you complained that you dont like what I have posted. Uploading from anywhere in southern Africa is impossible and so they have been scarce. Man more will soon arrive. For those of you who dont like the ones I have posted and dont  feel strong enough to tell me personally, fuck you - its my blog