How I bargained at an African border

In the year 2000 I was traveling by land from Cape Town to Alexandria, following the path taken by the great Malayalam writer and traveler S.K. Pottekatt in 1948. I had done roughly a quarter of the 4-month trip and reached Zimbabwe, via South Africa and Botswana. From Zimbabwe’s capital Harare I had taken a bus to Baira, Mozambique. I wished to take another bus from there to Blantyre in Malawi (a distance of about 500 kilometers) and move onwards by road to Tanzania and Kenya.
Mozambique was a scarred land, and Baira, a ghost town, recovering from a long-drawn-out and bloody civil war. Warnings on the side of the pot-holed road asked travelers not to stray from the macadam road, not even urinate outwards standing on the road, because there were undetected land mines all over and the stream of urine could set one off.

My great-hearted host in Baira, Helmut, an Austrian who owned oil storage facilities at the port, warned me that it was extremely hazardous to attempt a land crossing to Malawi because roads would be flooded after the rains and some of the territory was held by rogue elements of the anarchy that prevailed in post-war Mozambique. From his long African experience, he also told me there was no guarantee I would get a Malawi visa at the border, though the Malawi embassy in Harare had promised me so - while refusing me one!

That brought to an end my plans for a land crossing to Malawi. I started looking for other exit options to move forward and discovered that no airline could guarantee me a flight out of Mozambique any time in the near future to a country I had a visa for. It became clear that the only way forward was to retrace my steps to Zimbabwe border and seek a re-entry – and continue my journey. Then we found out that Zimbabwe had a visa on arrival provision. What good luck! I was ready to go.

Helmut searched high and low for someone driving to Zimbabwe who would give me a lift to the border and, if everything went well, take me all the way to Harare. Thus, Helmut’s Mozambican friend Nick, his Zimbabwean wife and I were driving one overcast and wet early morning from Baira to the Zimbabwean border. The few land-border crossings I had already done in Africa had given me a taste of the bitter uncertainties that accompanied them. I asked Nick if he had any advice for me about how to tackle the situation at the border. He had none. He was innocent of such complications. I clung silently to a wavering hope that he wouldn’t abandon me if things went wrong, though I didn’t know in what way he could help.

Soon, we stood looking at the Machipanda border check-post through which I had entered Mozambique four days back. We crossed Mozambican immigration smoothly and drove to the Zimbabwean check-post, a distance of about 500 meters. Nick wished me good luck, said he would wait for me on the other side and joined the car queue. I took my place in the general queue with my luggage. I presented my passport along with the filled-up visa application to the young Zimbabwean immigration officer.

He leafed through the passport, pushed it back towards me and said, ‘You cannot get a visa.’
It was a body-blow.
‘But,’ I said, ‘You’ve a provision for visa on arrival.’
‘Not for Indians and Pakistanis,’ he said.
I was shattered. But even in the middle of that crisis I could not but think: at least in some matters Indians and Pakistanis end up in the same boat!
I picked up the passport, extended it to him again and said, ‘I’m a traveler with a long journey ahead of me. I need to get to Zimbabwe to continue my journey. Please look at the countries and visas in my passport. I request you to please help.’

He took the passport and handed it over to the young woman next to him.
She glanced through it and said, ‘Sorry, no way. You’ve to return to Baira and apply at the Zimbabwean embassy for a visa and come back here.’
I said, ‘But my Mozambique visa is single entry.’
‘That’s not my problem,’ she said and returned to her work.
But the fact that she hadn’t returned the passport but instead kept it on her table gave me the ghost of a hope. As an Indian familiar with the ways of official corruption, I thought I detected a small signal. Through the open door I could see on the other side Nick and wife waiting for me near the car and that gave me some comfort.

I moved away from the counter and took up position near the wall. When about fifteen minutes had gone by, I went back to the young woman and repeated my pleads. She simply pretended she hadn’t heard me. I could’ve been speaking to the chair or table.
I was back to my abject stand at the wall. Time passed. I realized I had been standing there for more than half an hour. As I stood in that bare room, with the stark knowledge sinking into me that I was in a foreign land and the way forward seemed closed and there was no way back, and no one to help, I experienced one of the loneliest moments of my life.
Then I thought I saw the woman take a covert look at me. Electrified by that minute, by what seemed to be a positive signal, I went up to her and repeated all my pleadings. She refused to look at me. But the passport remained on the table. In my eyes that was a miraculous sight. As also the sight of Nick and wife waiting for me. But I also knew with a sinking heart what my true situation was: I was caught between two international borders and I could end up in jail as an illegal alien.

After a while the young woman said something to her fellow officer and went out. This seemed a still better sign. I now stepped up to him and repeated my request in the saddest tones. The only thing I didn’t do was weep. I think he was waiting for that move.
He picked up my passport and asked, ‘How much money do you have?’
I said, ‘Very little.’
‘But,’ he said, ‘here it says $ 1000.’
I cursed myself. In my visa application I had honestly entered that amount. I said, ‘That’s my whole travel budget. It’s all in travelers’ cheques. I have little cash with me.’

‘No problem, ‘he said, ‘we take travelers’ cheques too.’
I was caught. I knew the visa fee was $30. All my cheques were of the $100 denomination. If I gave him a $100 cheque, he was sure not to return the balance - $70. That would be a big blow to my shoestring budget. But knowing that it was now or never, I girded up my loins, opened my wallet and was about to produce the $100 cheque when, to my great astonishment I discovered a $50 cheque tucked away in another compartment of the wallet. (That is another story.) I took it out, signed and placed it on the table. The penny-pinching, bottom-end traveler in me couldn’t resist that.
‘That won’t do’, the officer said and pushed the passport towards me.
‘Please don’t ask more,’ I begged. ‘I’m not a rich man. I’m a budget traveler.’
‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘I can’t help you.’

I then produced a $10 currency note and added it to the cheque on the table. Just then the woman returned.
She took a look at the money on the table, turned to me and said, ‘Add another ten.’
The hardcore shoestring traveler surfaced again.
I wailed, ‘If I do that, I will be broke.’
‘Alright’, she said, looking me in the eye, ‘then you go right back to Baira. It’s the same for you either way.’
I knew my bargaining had played itself out. They had no more time to waste on an insignificant traveler from nowhere. If I failed to pay up instantly, I may not see the outside world for a long time; or perhaps never. I quickly put another $10 note on the table. She picked up the cheque and notes one by one, closely examined them on both sides, held them against the light, tapped each with the beautiful, pointed, silver-painted nail of her right forefinger and put them away. Then she sealed the passport and gave it to me.
‘Thank you very much,’ I said.
‘You’re welcome,’ she replied, with an unwavering look.

I wanted to tell her that my thanks came from my heart, that I had no ill-will. She was breaking the law by issuing a visa to an Indian and I was breaking the law by asking for one. And she had put me back on my travel route by mercilessly closing my inane bargaining. I doubt if she even expected to be thanked or thought that what she did deserved thanks. But for me what she did was an act of kindness that defied definition.
Paul Zacharia is a well-known Indian writer and columnist.