Day 128 – Police, police, police
28th January 2012
27.01.2012 - 28.01.2012
“Can you feel that?” said Somers, speeding up my slow rise out of slumber. “What?” “The car is rocking.” I unzipped the tent and looked outside. Urchin #1 was cleaning the car. Blinking ‘eck. “Oi. Nada washee the Redvers. Nada washee the car.” He shrugged at me and I got back inside. The rocking became gentler.
This signalled that the time had come for us to rise and shine. I hadn’t gotten down the ladder before I was being accosted by money changers. “I’m busy.” How had they gotten into our fortress? Through the open gate no doubt. With that they decided to stand and wait for me to finish.
We changed the last of our Mozambican money into Malawian Kwacha. Then we headed to the immigration office. Getting our passports stamped was easy. But it turned out that the customs’ official was still asleep. But we were told where he lived and we were told to go wake him up. We did just that and followed him around to his office where he stamped Redvers out of the country. We managed to swap some dollars for Kwacha with the same guy, 250 kwacha to the dollar. The bank rate is 160 to the dollar. The dollar is king, and we’re in a country whose financial system is inflating. The last thing we had to pass was the military gate where our details were recorded, Redvers was checked, and finally the boom was raised and we were free. A few kilometres of no-man’s land led us to Malawi, the land of the lake. Once more immigration was easy, and once more the customs official was nowhere to be seen. As it turned out, he was asleep too. We hung around for an hour or two intermittently pestering the other officials asking for someone to do something that resembled helping the tourists.
Whilst waiting we chowed a fresh pineapple we’d bought in Mozambique. I opened the drawer to find something had chewed a hole in our bag of milk powder. He’d crossed at least one border now.
The officials weren’t helping. Laura spoke to the guy who appeared in charge and he spoke with eyes on the board game in front of him. “Excuse me, its polite to look at the person who is talking to you.” “I’m listening,” he argued. “You’re not being very helpful. We’re visitors in your country, you have signs telling you your aims and how you should act towards us and you’re achieving none of them. It’s your job to help us.” With that, one guy stood and disappeared into the village. “He’s gone to find your officer,” said the other guy reluctantly.
Twenty minutes more passed before our customs official appeared. Twenty minutes after that we were through. The only issue was that we had no insurance. The guy seemed to think we’d be fine on the 100 kilometre stretch between here and the first town with an insurance sales office. We weren’t so sure but there wasn’t really anything else we could do. Another high five, another country entered. But there were still 350 kilometres to Lilongwe and sanctuary. The noise was worse than ever; something was grinding and we could only assume it was the brake drum.
And then we hit Police Engagement #17; a road block. Carnet and driver’s licence, but alas, no insurance papers. Our officer wanted specifically to see the insurance papers, he was right, we should have possessed them but how the hell could we get insurance if no one sold it at the border? He said he’d have to fine us, we said the guy at the border said we’d be OK to get to Balaka. He said there were two more road blocks before Balaka. We said we’d try our luck. He said he’d let us off this once. After we’d all said our part, we said thank you for his lenience and drove on. After 100 kilometres and two sets of sleeping police road blocks, we found Balaka; one of the several homes of Prime Insurance Ltd. Several laps of the bus depot, (a wrong turn, repeated), and seven thousand Kwacha later, we had one months’ vehicle insurance and were back on the road to Lilongwe.
But that damned noise was here to stay. One UJ was going so we decided to try and get the thing off, one less problem and all that, and besides, we could drive in two wheel drive. And so, once more we found ourselves beside the road undoing prop shafts, providing engrossing entertainment for all nearby.
All was going well. We hadn’t yet knocked over any of the thousands of people who were walking in the road. We hit Police Engagement #’s 18 and 19 which were inconvenient but straight forward. Number 19 involved my doing 56kmh in a 50kmh zone. I was justifiably told off and allowed to continue, can’t say fairer than that. Police Engagement #20 however was a bloody peach. A rotten, maggoty, foetid peach consisting of two young pricks who saw dollars in the paintwork of Redvers. We were rolling to a stop as the police let the five vehicles ahead of us through the barrier without hesitation. Redvers however was something else. The white be-gloved hand of slim officer number one rose and requested we stop. Papers, carnet and insurance weren’t enough. He wanted to see what we had in the back. “Drive off the road please,” he pointed to the dirt at the side.
By this stage in our journey, the drivers’ door was closed on a semi-permanent basis as the roof rack was wearing a hole in the door frame. So, Laura jumped out of the passenger seat and opened the back door, to reveal four eighty litres drums in front of an eighty kilo hippo and surrounded by mud covered recovery equipment that had been needed the day before. “What is this?” he pointed at the diesel. “It’s diesel, you have a fuel crisis, customs cleared it to come in.” “No, we have fuel,” he gestured at a petrol station over the road that did seem to have something in its pumps, “this fuel will have to stay with us.” “No, it’s ours, you can’t,” protested Somers. At this point I was scrabbling over the centre console to the passenger door to get out and speak to this utter (four letter word beginning with the letter after ‘B’ removed to avoid offence.) “What’s this?” he said looking at Joseph. “A wooden hippo,” we’re getting used to stating the obvious were Joe’s concerned. “Where are his papers?” I’d have smiled if he wasn’t serious. “What the ffff- “ I tailed off restoring a quantum of composure. Somers resumed, ”It’s our hippo. Zambia didn’t mind him, Zimbabwe didn’t mind him, Mozambique didn’t mind him and your customs official said he was ok to come in.” “Well this is not OK. We will have to confiscate him. Bring your car over to the office.”
We were tired, tired like you wouldn’t believe; too many kilometres with too little sleep; too many road blocks with too little integrity; too many noises with too few solutions. I actually wanted to cry; I’m sure Laura was thinking about it too. There was only one thing we could do: Find the boss; and plead for sanity.
I locked the car and asked for our papers back. Slim number one liked his power, he wasn’t giving them back yet. “Where’s your boss? Who’s the guy in charge, we want to deal with him, not you.” Our man pointed out into the road, “He’s over there. But I will go and speak to him, wait here.” He started dawdling out before hesitating. Somers and I walked past him and introduced ourselves. We walked the boss back to the car and explained our predicament. The fuel was ours, that was undisputed, but now he wanted to know about Joseph’s papers. Three individuals, a lady and two gentlemen, that had been stood nearby approached and asked us what was going on. After explaining they told us that if there is only one of an item and if it is destined for our homes in England then we need no papers and we are free to transport it. With this we looked at the cops. “Wait here,” said the boss as he took the two youngsters and our papers into the office for a conference. The tide felt like it was turning. We’d gained a foothold on a slippery slope and suddenly the slope was levelling out. The trio reassured us and after five minutes the cops reappeared. They wanted to know if there was anything in Joseph. Out came the recovery ropes, the hi-lift, the four drums and the tarpaulin. Off came Joseph’s rug and in went the officer to feel up a wooden, non-Trojan, hippopotamus. Finally they were satisfied; the boss told us that we could leave. We took the papers we gave thanks and thanks and thanks to the trio and we left, just eight kilometres from our destination, Mubayo Backpackers, Lilongwe.
We crawled into the backpackers, metal scraping metal somewhere inside Redvers. We walked straight into the bar and asked for beer. Then we proceeded to tell anyone who would listen about our last sixty hours.
As I opened the door to show Joseph to a new friend I also opened our drawer. A brown shadow, eight centimetres in length with the same again in tail, leapt out, ran down my leg and off into the bushes. He’d come at least 1500 kilometres and looked a little underweight. Worse still for him, he’s going to have to learn English. The mouse had to be an omen. We were vanquishing the pestilence from our existence. Life could only get better from here. I turned with a smile on my face to see a man slightly bemused at the fact we had mice and hippos in our car.
Posted by ibeamish 00:39 Archived in Mozambique Comments (0)