Zimbabwe…

Well what a day…. It was ridiculous.

We left early and headed for the South African border, we arrived at about 11:30 and stood in line in the hot sun for 3 hours.. for the first hour and a half the line slowly moved forward, people where queue jumping something shocking, it was annoying us, but it was really upsetting the Italians in our group. They were very vocal, I just couldn’t understand anything they said. Then for some unexplained reason the authorities closed the doors to the immigration office for one and a half hours, no one moved…. No explanation, nothing….People were getting very agitated and pushy. Finally a policeman came along and started throwing people down the stairs at the front of the queue. He then disappeared and then he returned, we heard people shouting and the line was pushing back against us, but we couldn’t see what was happening up front. It was very confusing and the people kept closing in around us, as they were forced off the road and further back from up front. We later learned that a South African policeman had been throwing the people down the stair when they pushed in line. Later when he came back and they were still doing it, he used a cattle prod to shock them. They had really annoyed me, but I didn’t want them electrocuted… The South Africans treated everyone in the line with contempt and disrespect, it was an eye opener to see what they did to people. One female officer just ran up and shoved a woman really hard into some other women, for no reason what so ever, it was appalling. Once the line started moving the people from behind where just pushing us along, it was really weird and I was chuckling to myself about the weird things you see when I looked over and noticed how upset my sister was, we had been separated and she was being pushed along by the crowd too. Unfortunately she could not breath in the crush and she could not see me, with all the yelling and pushing she became afraid that they were going to riot and it really upset her. I went to her side and fortunately as we climbed the stairs to the immigration office a lady stepped forward and seeing how upset Narelle was she asked how old she was. I told her and she took us into a separate building where we lined up with just a few people, we were through in about ten minutes, the rest of our group were sent through a long corridor with everyone else, still being treated like cattle. It was very distressing. After we were processed, we went outside to wait for the rest of our group, a policeman came up and told us we could not wait here, after your papers are stamped you must leave the country…. This is all just to get out of South Africa, we have not even began the process for entering Zimbabwe yet….. Lord, help us.

Once we arrived in Zimbabwe the process was easier, they give you a tourist authority to help you with the process. It was still time consuming but only took about an hour all up, so better. BUT… once you leave the border, that is when the fun begins… The local police stop you and look for reasons to get bribes from you. Our guide had all the right paperwork, so they couldn’t fine him or ask for bribes, but that did not stop them stopping you. We were stopped 6 times in the first 15 minutes… Seriously, 6 times. They do not even coordinate the road blocks, once you are out of sight of one, another one is there. Apparently they come from anywhere, they are not local police, they are just looking for bribes. We were stopped at least another 6 times before we reached our destination. We arrived hot and bothered and finally got our dinner at 9pm… What a day

We did see some water buffalo before we left Kruger, and as we could not take any pictures at the border, here is some water buffalo


I am off to bed

Night

Lones