What a busy couple of weeks!!!!

To be honest I don’t know where to start … from the beginning is always good, but it is hard to find the beginning and the end???? Crazy times … but let me try to explain. Just to let you know ... this is a bit of a longer blog, so make sure you grab a coffee, get a comfortable chair and enjoy your reading experience ...

We currently have an Aussie team of 14 people visiting YFC from a church on the southside of Brisbane (please don’t hold the fact that they live of the southside against them). Debbie, our good and faithful leader arranged to have them collected from J’berg airport instead of them having to pay an extra amount to fly up to Bulawayo, this is where the problems start. Debbie had purchased a 7 seater car from a Japanese export company and tried to import the car into Zimbabwe the week before the team arrived; so Dereck (a good friend of Debbie), Daniel (his son), Mike (another friend) and I took the first 3 hour drive down to the border to try to collect the vehicle. It took Dereck and Daniel over 6 hours to clear the car on the South African side and then try to get it cleared on the Zimbabwean side … with no success. Dereck tried to pay the 115% duty with his credit card (which other people have done) only to have the customs clerk advise that they no longer have the facilities to accept credit card and we had to pay the duty in cash. Now came the task of trying to get the $50,000 rand from the bank in one transaction or over a 10 day period, not enough time on this trip.

Next, the task of trying to transport the 14 Aussies from J’berg airport with only one 7 seater car and a bukki (ute/tray back) … good news came only 1 day later with a volunteer saying he could drive his sisters 7 seater vehicle as well … yay we now have enough seats and it should be easy from this point onwards. The day before we left (last Thursday) I had to get a police check done on the bukki (the car I was allocated to drive) to get it cleared to cross the border. This involves driving the car to an inspection yard in Bulawayo where a police office checks the chassi number against the registration papers, he signs the piece of paper and then gives it into the office where I collect it the following morning stamped and ready to go. Not this time … when the police officer checked the chassi number he noticed a discrepancy and advised that I should take the car over to the holding yard … what is going on??? No one told me of any possibility of a discrepancy. I was taken into police custody until I could prove that the car wasn’t stolen. I called my good friend Dereck (who I was borrowing the car from) to ask what was happening … it was then that I found out that the car was stolen over 5 years ago but had apparently already been cleared by the police back then. After waiting over hour in the C.I.D. office the papers arrived and I was released. To be honest the investigating officer was a good man and enjoyed trying to get me to say words in their language and laugh when I said them with a weird Aussie inflection (my self esteem was definitely being deflated after each word I said … one has to please the police officers over here).

The next day we set off on our journey … 3 hour drive to the border and then another 3 hours to Peitersburg, stop for the night and then another 3 hours to J’berg by Friday morning with very few problems. I think the only problem faced was the fact that we found out that team was arriving on Saturday morning instead of Sunday morning ... it was a good thing that that small detail was checked.

After collecting the team we set off to drive back to Bulawayo … we spent one night in Loise Trickard and then the next morning we set off for the border. Dereck’s car and my car cleared through all the security checks with absolutely no hitches … Tulani (the third driver) had the problems. The police decided to do a random security check on this vehicle and it was while doing this check that they found out that the car was stolen back in 2001 and was never recovered. Now Tulani, being in possession of a stolen vehicle was taken to prison and the 7 Aussies were set free and had to walk across the border. What was only expecting to be a two hour task to pass though both borders instead took close to 5 hours. With the help of a friend of Dereck’s (which he just happened to stumble across in Customs) we were able to get everyone back up to Bulawayo.

Now comes to task of trying to clear Tulani. Basically we had to prove that the car was purchased and Tulani had no idea that the car was actually stolen. That night at about 10:30pm, Peter, Duram (a board member of YFC) and I (I was the only one now that had a vehicle that was cleared to cross the border) started the journey to go back down to South Africa to clear our friend. It wasn’t until about 3:30am what we actually cleared both borders and started the task of trying to find the police station in Messina (the border town on the South African side). Of course, the police station was being refurbished and they had no signs on how to get into the station … so 1.5 hours later we finally got in and found out that we needed to head back to the border to speak with the police there … good game … good game. It was after traveling back to the border we found out that the VIS (Vehicle Inspection S????) team did not actually start until 7.30am in the morning and the police on duty could do absolutely nothing to help us. It was now 5.30am and about 24 hours since we had all woken up; we had to find somewhere to get a coffee and for one of us to catch a bit of shut eye (sleep). This task in itself was difficult, being a country town nowhere was open for a good coffee (we had to drink instant coffee) and no-one could really sleep (we were all over tied and could not get comfortable).

Finally 7.30am on Monday morning came about and we headed eagerly over to the VIS office to reveal all our paperwork to the investigating officer. We all expected a pat on the back for being top notch investigators and where expecting to go straight to the prison to get our mate out … not this time through. There was a court hearting scheduled for that morning and the evidence which we bought forward was not enough to satisfy the investigation team … they now needed to search their files for the original paperwork and we needed to give them more paperwork from Interpol to prove his innocents. Basically to cut a long story short, Tulani is remanded in custody pending further investigation or until we can get the Interpol paperwork down to the investigator. So by 12.30pm on Monday afternoon we started our journey back up to Bulawayo sadly disappointed because our main objective of setting Tulani free was not achieved.

NEWS JUST IN .... Tulani has just been released after one week ... he is now on his way back upto Bulawayo ... I wonder if he will help take the Aussies back to J'berg airport on Thursday????