03 May Zambezi River — Haggling our way into Zambia

When we lived in Botswana, we’d drive up north sometimes. There was a gas station just this side of the Zambezi where we’d fill up before taking the Land Rover across the ferry into Zambia. Africa was over there and, well . . . you never knew. It was good to have a full tank of gas. People who live in Botswana think Africa starts on the far side of the Zambezi.

The first time we stopped at that gas station, two lines of vehicles waited for their chance to get to the pumps. One line consisted of a dozen cars, a couple of Land Rovers, and a motorcycle. The other was a pickup truck loaded with empty garbage cans. We imagined it would be quicker behind the pickup.

The people in the other line knew something because their line moved from time to time. Not often but, every now and then, the driver at the head of the line would fire up his engine and be on his way. The other drivers would move up one space, turn off their motors and, when they thought Peggy and I weren’t looking, glance in our direction and grin. After a while, they grinned openly.

That station must have had the slowest pump in all of Africa and the pickup in front of us must have been running on empty for a year, it was so out of gas. It was so out of gas it was if the hose wasn’t connected to a pump at all, but to a funnel inside the station where a lady would pour in a gallon of gasoline, then put the bucket on her head and hike a mile or so to the petroleum well, wait her turn, chat with the other ladies, draw out a gallon of gasoline, place the bucket on her head and hike back to the funnel where she’d let the gasoline trickle down the hose into the pickup.

I walked over and talked to the attendant. “Just a few more minutes,” he said, “and I’ll have the tank on the pickup filled.” By then, people in the other line were laughing at me.

You’d have thought that once the tank was topped off and the pickup rocked and burped, the lady back at the funnel could rest for a while. But no such luck. In Africa, a woman’s work is never done. The attendant began putting gas into the garbage cans in the back of the pickup.

Garbage cans.

He was filling open-topped garbage cans with gasoline, and it took him most of the morning. When the pickup finally drove off, gas slopped into the bed, then cascaded onto the ground. Gallons of gas. Hours’ worth of the gas the driver was taking to sell in Zimbabwe. Conditions had gotten so desperate over there a person could sell almost anything, including gasoline from open-topped garbage cans.

We took his place at the pump, the attendant inserted the nozzle and fuel began to trickle into the Land Rover. Much, much later in the day than we’d planned, the nozzle gave a final click and our tank was filled. Then, before we could pay, the attendant put his hands on the side of the Land Rover and began to shove.

“No need for that,” Peg and I both said as we rocked to the left.

“No worries,” he said, and let go and the Land Rover swung back to the right.

“No really, it’s okay,” we said as the Land Rover yawed to the left and I grabbed the dashboard to hang on. “Here, let me just get my wallet . . .”

The attendant let go and we pendulumed back to the right, gaining momentum.

“. . . and give you some money and we’ll be . . .”

He shoved again, and the Land Rover lurched to the left.

“. . . on our way.”

He stepped back, we jolted to the right, the gas line burped, he returned to the pump with the satisfied look of the craftsman whose job has been well and truly done, and spent a happy ten minutes putting in one last liter. Any job worth doing is worth doing well.

When we were finally out of there and headed toward the ferry, we began passing trucks parked along the road. Big, African, tractor-trailers, some with thirty, thirty-four, thirty-six wheels. In America, we have semis. In Africa, they have the whole things.

A mile of trucks, nose to bumper, maybe a mile-and-a-half, waiting their turn on the single, tiny ferry. Because the landing on the Zambia side doesn’t line up with the one on the Botswana side, it takes most of an hour for the ferry to cross over, deliver a single truck, load whatever needs to come to Botswana, come to Botswana, unload and make room for the next vehicle. Trucks wait for days, close to a week, sometimes, inching forward, one truck at a time, to take their turn on that ferry.

Land Rovers don’t have to wait, they can fit into the leftover space beside one of the trucks, and we drove right on.

 

 

There shouldn’t even have been a ferry over the Zambezi. Plans and international funding had been in the works for years, decades probably, to build a bridge, a bridge that would have brought goods and food into Zambia, ore from the Copper Belt out, and a measure of prosperity to the country. Geologically and hydrologically the place to cross the river is where the ferry crosses, but a bridge there would cut through a few feet of Zimbabwean air space.

A theoretical few feet, but real enough as far as international borders go: a little wedge of Zimbabwe jutting into the air over the Zambezi which no bridge could penetrate without permission from Robert Mugabe.

Which required a massive transfer of wealth to his personal, numbered bank accounts.

Which no international bridge-donating organization was about to let happen. And the trucks lingered for days, sometimes a week, waiting for the ferry.

With nothing better to do, the drivers do what lonely men far from their wives all over the world do. The result is that, among local women of the appropriate age group, the HIV infection rate is sixty-two percent . . . a prevalence that’s not even possible. All the scientific models show beyond a mathematical certainty that no plague can ever affect more that twenty-six percent of a population at the same time.

It wasn’t just Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe who wanted a piece of the action. When we landed in Zambia, the immigration lady tried to shake us down. This kind of thing never happened in Botswana, and we were damned if we were going to let it happen to us in Zambia.

“No country in the world charges a hundred dollars for a visa,” we told her. Some countries charge twenty-five. Avaricious countries like Zimbabwe might charge thirty-five. “Nobody charges a hundred.”

“We charge a hundred,” the immigration Lady said.

“We’re not paying a hundred,” Peggy said, breaking her disguise as the most politically-correct, Third-World friendly American anywhere in Africa.

“You will if you want to get into Zambia,” the lady said.

“Well, we don’t want to get into Zambia that bad,” I said.

“We’ll just get back on the ferry and go see Victoria Falls from the Zimbabwe side,” Peggy said.

“Zimbabwe only costs thirty-five dollars,” I said.

“Each,” the immigration lady said.

“It’s each here, too,” Peggy said. “We’ll save a hundred-and-thirty dollars if we go to Victoria Falls from the Zim side.”

“I’ll see what my supervisor says,” the immigration lady told us and stepped away from the window the way car salesmen step out of the room when they pretend to check something with their manager.

Peggy and I sat on the ground beneath the visa window with our backs propped against the wall, wondering how long we’d have to wait for the ferry back to Botswana. There seemed to be an awful lot of vehicles in line ahead of us.

“Okay,” the lady leaned out the window overhead. “It will cost you a hundred . . .”

“Get in the car,” I said. “We’re going to Zimbabwe.”

“. . . pula.”

“A hundred pula? Twelve-fifty US?”

“Each.”

We thanked the lady, forked over the pula, and drove into Zambia.

A few weeks later we took the ferry back to Botswana. By then, Peggy and I knew better than to use the gas station beside the highway. The town of Kasane wasn’t all that far away and there was a gas station there. Suckers we thought as we drove past the cars waiting for gas. The lines were even longer than when they’d been when we were on our way up. Then we got to Kasane and found out why. The station in town wasn’t in town, anymore.

Or, at least, it wasn’t a gas station anymore. It was a blackened crater with the melted remnants of a sign drooped over the scorched hulks of gas pumps. The ground was hard-packed and scorched and the sides of nearby buildings were charred from the heat. Someone, we were told, had been filling garbage cans with gasoline when the whole place went up in a fireball.

Back home, we mentioned to the ambassador how the lady at the border had tried to shake us down.

“She wanted a hundred dollars?” the ambassador asked.

“Each,” I said.

“Same thing happened to me,” the ambassador said. “I think it was the same lady.”

“What did you do?”

“I told her I was the United States ambassador,” the ambassador said. “I shouldn’t have to pay anything at all.”

Sweet, I thought. “What did she say?”

“She asked me what I was going to do in Zambia and I said I was on my way to Victoria Falls. She told me that seeing Vic Falls is not official business.”

“What did you do?”

“Paid the hundred dollars. Ambassadors don’t get to make a scene. I was angry, though. First thing, when I got back to the embassy I checked what it really costs to get into Zambia. I was going to file a complaint.”

“And . . . ?”

“It costs a hundred dollars.”

“Each?”

“Each.”