The humanitarian

Plagiarism note: Anyone who has read Paul Theroux’s brilliant, curmudgeonly book, “Dark Star Safari” (if you haven’t, you should) will notice a similarity with his account of border problems in Malawi. It’s purely coincidence, though his account actually helped guide me in my dealings with the border agent.

MALAWI-ZAMBIA BORDER – For a country that hasn’t fought a war, there’s a curious number of police and military checkpoints in Malawi. If you’re on a tour or in a rental car, you’ll probably just be waved through and think little of it, but riding the local mini-buses I noticed an odd pattern. We were almost always stopped and after a brief conversation between the bus conductor and the cops, the fuzz would get on.

Sometimes they would even boot the passengers from the front to get the prime seats (also the deadliest, I imagined, but I don’t think they were thinking that far ahead). They never paid.

So I started looking closely at the checkpoint goings on and saw that the conductors would walk with one hand behind their back, a wad of Kwacha (Malawian money) in their palm and return empty-handed. These bus operators weren’t making a killing - $4 a pop for a five to six hour ride – and not only did they have to bribe these guys, they often had to give them a free ride.

Malawi has many charms – a deeply hospitable vibe, lush forests, a massive azure lake dotted with fishing villages – but under the surface there’s an ugly corruption made uglier by the poverty of the people made to pony up to the greedy bureaucrats.

University, even secondary school, is a pipe dream for many without government connections, let alone a good job.

For most of my time in Malawi I saw the graft flash by, dream-like. It was dirty and disappointing but it didn’t involve me.

On our tenth day in Malawi, we arrived at the Zambian border. We walked up to the Malawian counter all smiles, ready to leave the country and start the next adventure. The sour-faced border agent was not smiling. As he flipped through our passports, he shook his head.

‘There is a problem,’ he said grimly.

‘What’s the problem, sir,’ I asked, puzzled.

‘She has overstayed her visa,’ he said, not even making an attempt to look Connie’s way.

He showed us our passports, mineshowing a 30-day stamp (the maximum allowed for a free tourist visa), Connie’s showing a seven-day stamp. It was odd, indeed, as we had handed in our passports together and asked for the same amount of time.

The scam clicked in my head immediately – stamp short on one end in hopes of a bribe opportunity on the other – and I thought to myself, ‘This son-of-a-bitch will get nothing.’

‘There is a problem,’ I said. ‘It appears your man made a mistake at the Tanzanian border.’

‘He did not make a mistake, look at the stamp,’ the bureaucrat retorted with distinctly uncreative circular logic. ‘There are laws in Malawi and they must be respected…(blah, blah, blah).” He waved the fraudulent stamp, and gave a long-winded speech about respect for the law.

He got frustrated when we wouldn’t play his game and hauled us into his office to intimidate us.

‘You will have to go to Lilongwe and pay ($35) to get an extension,’ he said, still not talking to Connie, the person with the visa problem. Lilongwe was five hours away. This was pure bullshit.

‘No, we’re going to Zambia today,’ I said.

Connie, understandably upset by the situation, then did two things that helped our caused. First she said to the dithering officer, ‘Look, I don’t want to go to jail.’ I felt a sympathy synapse twitch in the man’s small brain.

Then, more presciently, ‘Well, why don’t you call the Tanzanian border to clear this up.’

‘But it’s Sunday,’ he sputtered.

‘Surely the phones work on Sunday,’ I said.

He changed the subject. ‘What if I just let you walk to Zambia?’ still not making eye-contact with Connie. The unfinished end of the sentence, of course, was ‘What is that worth to you?’

‘That’s exactly what we want,’ I said. ‘I know what you want, but you won’t get it. I think we need to speak to your boss.’

The reptilian thief hauled us around front and launched into another lecture on the law. I knew we had won and just needed to keep quiet while he saved face.

‘I am stamping her through on humanitarian grounds,’ he said with a straight face, again looking at me.

We walked across, apparently refugees fleeing to Zambia.