Journal Entry 5: Deported!

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Although I’ve refrained from mentioning anything since I’ve arrived here over 3 months ago, I’ve been having a few problems getting the necessary full-time work permit that allows me to legally live and volunteer here in Zambia. See, in Zambia you are allowed to stay in the country as a volunteer for a total of 3 months for free. After that, you either need to get a work permit or leave the country. I applied for my work permit the first week I arrived here, however, due to various “administrative and technical problems” it “hasn’t been processed to date”. Over the past 3 months, I’ve had quite a crazy experience trying to get this work permit approved. Whether it was them not receiving the application form (which was sent to them the first week I was here), me not being an officially registered engineer in the country (which isn’t necessary to be a volunteer), or me not having my official university degree on me (which isn’t required according to the application form), it just seems like Zambia doesn’t want me to be here helping out in the country. Which possibly explains why, when I talked to the immigration department the day before my 3 months expired, I was very abruptly told that I needed to immediately pack my bags and please leave the country by tomorrow or else I would be arrested. Mmmmm, I wonder what EWB would do if they heard one of their volunteers was in Zambian jail? =^)

Although experiencing life in a repressive, unsafe, and freedomless square room, I decided that I would prefer to spend it in a repressive, unsafe and freedomless country instead. So the next day I arrived at the Lusaka bus station and purchased a ticket to the closest country I could get too, Zimbabwe. IDE (my NGO here) also had an office in Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital city, so it was arranged that I would go and stay with some people who work for them while I wait for my work permit to be approved.

I boarded an almost full bus departing to Harare first thing in the morning. I found an empty row of seats 2nd row from the back of the bus and put my laptop case in the luggage storage rack above my seat and sat down. I was quite upset that I was being deported from the country as I had finally just settled down in Choma, made great connections with some farmers, and developed a work plan to start working with them. But, I decided things like this happen for a reason and a large part of integrating into the culture here was being able to deal with all the crap and still maintain my sanity with a smile. I was at least excited to get a chance to see another country and Zimbabwe was definitely going to be an experience. Zimbabwe (or Zim as many locals refer to it as) had always been a country of intrigue for me. I would often hear about it in the international news because it’s ruling leader, Robert Mugabe, had always run the country in a controversial manner that usually eeked the leaders of the western world. The most publicized controversy occurred 4-5 years ago when Mugabe decided that it was time to finally right the land tenure issue in Zim and give the black people in Zimbabwe back some of the countries farm land. Back when Zimbabwe was a British colony in the first part of the 20th century, many white farmers moved to Zimbabwe and set up their livelihoods. These farmers established huge commercial farms all over Zim and played a major role in helping Zim become the largest food supplier in all of Sub-Saharan Africa which played a major role in helping them become one of the most developed countries in all of Africa. Zimbabwe gained independence from colonialism in the late 70’s and has done extremely well for itself as compared to many of the other countries in Africa. But a lot of the wealth in Zimbabwe lied mainly in the white proportion (a small minority) of the population while most of the black people (the vast majority) still lived in abject poverty. Therefore, Mugabe decided that land reform was necessary to give the land back to the majority of the population. Now, in my opinion, this wasn’t such a bad idea in theory. It has been shown in other developing countries that redistributing the land by fixing land tenure issues has been one of the major reforms that has helped them reduce poverty (such as in many of the East Asian countries). However, again in my opinion (and many many other people around the world), the way Mugabe went about it, to not be subtle at all, was ridiculously stupid. Mugabe pretty much told almost all the white farmers in Zimbabwe to get the hell off their land and told the blacks that they could just move onto this land, claim it for themselves and start farming. Such a rash and shock therapy policy obviously caused huge problems as not only was there huge resistance from the white farmers who were born and had lived their entire lives on these farms, but the problem was complicated even more because many of Mugabe political friends ended up being given the best farmland. There were violent clashes between the farmers and the government and in the end many people were killed. The international community ended up condemning the actions and placed all sorts of economic sanctions on the country. There are heaps of other complex factors involved in Zim’s history that got it to where it is today, but I’ll let you research those for yourselves if you’re interested.

Anyways, back to more important things, so I’m sitting on the bus waiting for it to leave when all of a sudden I get that uncomfortable grumbly rumbly feeling that my stomach didn’t appreciate the fried fritter I offered it for breakfast and had decided it didn’t want to keep it around for much longer. I know for a fact that I’m not going to make the 8-hour trip to Harare clinching my butt cheeks the whole way, so I scout out what opportunities for relief are out there. I ask the single person sitting in the seat behind me to please watch my stuff as I run off the bus and into the bathroom. Less then 5 minutes later I climb my way back onto the bus feeling very much relieved and make my way back to my seat. However, once I locate my seat at the back of the bus, I see that the man who was sitting behind me is now gone. My eyes quickly dart to where my laptop case was….relief….it was still there. Just to be sure, I give my laptop case a little shake…..definitely lighter then usual….. I pull down the case, open up the zipper, look inside……NOTHING!….The laptop was gone, the power adapter was gone, the digital camera was gone, the newly purchased cell phone was gone, the Swiss army knife was gone. I let out an agonizing scream of pain and frustration as I very clearly yell to the rest of the bus that I’ve been robed. I turn around and frantically start searching the area. The window for the seat behind me, where the man who I asked to watch my stuff was sitting, was open. Sitting on that seat lied my digital camera, underneath it sat the power adapter. With hopes raised I search crazily for the other things, but I find nothing else.

The time that passed from there on seems more like a blur now. But after the bus underwent a search and I filed a police report, it was concluded that the man who I had entrusted to watch my stuff decided that his already purchased ticket to Harare was worth the sacrifice and he had taken everything out of my computer bag and moved it out the window to someone else on the outside. There were guys on the bus that hadn’t purchased tickets and were changing currency from Zambian to Zimbabwean who we suspected took part in the theft as well, but there was no evidence. We assumed that they dropped the digital camera and power adapter while moving everything out the window.

I was definitely in shock. I didn’t know how to react. In a sense, that laptop was the most important thing I had here. I used it for everything I did. Without it, my ability to do the majority of my work was going to be 10 times as difficult. Even more painful was that on that laptop was 3 months of all my work to date, all my pictures, all the movies I had been making and all of my personal journals. To top things off, I wanted to stay around the bus station and try to identify the guy who stole my computer or at least search around the various black market computer shops to put the word out that I was willing to pay an enormous amount of money to get that computer back, but because of my deportation notice, I needed to leave the country that day and the last bus to Harare was leaving. Fortunately, my friend Mike working in Lusaka was able to initiate the search for me, but I had no other choice but to get on the bus. I had a whirlwind of emotions running through me ranging from anger to shock to complete and utter helplessness. I felt naked and vulnerable and empty. And all I wanted was something in my life to be stable, but that was the time when the bus’s engine started up and off we went to Zimbabwe, me sitting at the back of the bus without the slightest ounce of security. I was being deported from an African country that I was just starting to get a small feeling for to another African country that the most western countries heavily condemned. I really had no idea where I would be staying, who I was supposed to be staying with, or for how long I would be there. All I had was two sets of clothes, an empty computer bag, and a single phone number.

All I wanted at this time was to fall asleep and awake from this horrible nightmare with me back in Choma and everything the way it was “supposed to be”. But as life here exemplifies over and over, you rarely get what you hope for. And this is a David story so it would be incomplete to leave it at only 3 pages.

We were on the road for no less then 10 minutes when a lady sat down beside me and initiated conversation. She very plainly explained to me that she and a number of her friends on the bus were planning on smuggling a number of bags of illegal goods across the border and that they needed my help to do so. Man did this lady pick the wrong Muzungo to ask that day. I kind of feel sorry for her because I usually would be fairly polite about addressing this sort of issue. Unfortunately on this day, she was given a flamboyantly strict lecture about the risks of getting caught smuggling illegal goods across the border and how if she believed in any sort of fate or witchcraft that by choosing me to help her on this specific day was only writing a recipe for what could only end up as a romantic and prolonged jail sentence with yours truly. They offered to compensate me for the risk I would be taking…….I told her that unless she was going to offer me a new laptop, to please just leave me alone to cry in my self pity for the rest of the ride. She got the message and went on to see if any of the other passengers would be able to help her out.

Crossing the border was surprisingly not as horrific as I had been anticipating. The Zambian border guard stamped my passport allowing me to officially leave, the Zimbabwean immigration official gave me my entry visa only delaying the bus leaving approximately one hour due to me not knowing the address I was going to be staying at, and the ladies smuggled their goods across the border without a hitch (they were obviously very experienced). I figured that if this day was to be the apocalyptic Armageddon that it had precluded to be, I should have at least been given a strip search or something. I was thinking that maybe, just maybe, the worst was over and things were starting to normalize……..

Of course that glimmer of hope lasted all of 5 minutes. Once across the border the bus stopped to pick up some Zimbabwean passengers hitching a ride into the capital. A half drunk man jumped on the bus and it only took him a second to spot out the single white person sitting at the back of the bus, this one looking especially vulnerable, and he had found his target. You know how I mentioned earlier that I had heard a lot of rumors about the racial tension going on in Zim. Well, this guy was definitely a rumor perpetuator because once he got right up next to my seat, he proceeded to stand beside me and drunkenly yell at me in a mixture of English and one of the native Zimbabwean languages, Shona. Despite the mixture of Shona and saliva shooting out of his mouth, I think I was able to get the just of what was being said. Pretty much he was upset that I was white, that my ancestors had colonized and destroyed his people and that I needed to get the hell out of his country. And just to be sure, anything that I didn’t quite fully understand, it was conveniently translated for me by one of the illegal goods smuggling ladies who was sitting behind me. I was pretty much numb by this point in time and after about 10 minutes of constant firing, I actually broke a smile and started to laugh. I think he realized that I was pretty close to completely losing it because after that he stopped his rant, stumbled to the front of the bus, and passed out.

Well, I thought to myself, that was a friendly welcome to the country. Can’t wait to see what else this adventure has in store for me. I don’t know what I did wrong, but I have this funny feeling that I’ve seriously upset somebody here and that person has cast a doozy of a spell on me. Anybody experienced in witchcraft and know any good ways of getting rid of a curse?

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Photos

A warm welcome
I wasn't exactly in the mood to take any photos during these days, but this is one of fellow EWB volunteer Mike and I pretending to sneak into Zim when he first arrived here. Ironic that I'd actually be deported there a month later

Comments

[Ali]

Tough break...
Just read this journal, sorry to hear about the laptop - I know how gutted I'd be to lose mine. Glad you still have the camera though. Send backups of your photos home when you get the chance... btw - your writing and photos are great - hope your luck changes.