Police Search

Hot and baking in the sun with rolled up sleeves, loads of suncream, a minor case of dehydration and still without a lift. Hitching this leg of the journey to Lusaka has not been easy. Eventually we're picked up by Watson, Arthur and Philemon who offer us some cold water and bananas. Thinking we've hit a stroke of luck we relax and dose off in the back off the truck, encouraged by the dull hum and shaking of the moving vehicle.

After about one hour I'm rustled awake buy Watson saying we've been stopped at a road block and the police want to see us. We bundle out the vehicle still a bit puffy eyed and cumbersome in our movements. We're taken to an office and told to wait for the immigration officer. The multiple conversations in Swahili and hand gestures leave us slightly confused and unsure about why we're in this position. All we're told by Watson is that they are looking for three young white guys.

Thirty minutes pass, as we sit sharing a worn down wooden bench with an elderly man on crutches, until we are approached by an absolute hoodlum of a fellow. Of course it turns out that he's the immigration officer we've patiently been waiting for. He's short, wiry, very fair-skinned and has a skull-like face with a very defined bone structure. He's wearing a 'Muslim hat', a blue vest, bell-bottom jeans and a fat blue chain to top it off. He hardly says a word and when he does it's through a clenched jaw with a slight whistle caused by the gap in his middle teeth. Unfortunately he hasn't got the keys to his 'investigation room' and so he asks for our passports. Passports in hand he disappeared again for a while.

After fetching our bags, we return this time with the investigation room open and our inspection begins. One by one we empty our bags as he looks on tentatively for that which he wishes to find. As I sit waiting for my turn, my gaze is drawn to the investigation pin-board where a photo of four is enlarged with the heading 'Murder Suspects' and pictures of dead bodies brutally disfigured and lifeless. Remembering their faces in case I meet them along the way, I begin to wonder how serious this search is and if someone could have planted something in our bags as they sat unguarded for an hour or so. Gazing once again upon the pin board, I am drawn to a less severe case, "Garden table and chairs missing: Reward offered". The 'mickey-mouseness' of this case is comforting.

As for the remainder of our drug search, it was possibly the most pathetic drug search I could have ever conjured up in my head. Basically everything that might have contained drugs was not searched and everything that had no chance of containing drugs was. In fact, if we were smuggling drugs we definitely could have passed off with a good few kgs of something.

Coming across our Bob Marley CD's, used for bargaining and giving to truck drivers, he proudly stated "Rastapharianism" as if it was some major piece of evidence that he could add to his pin board. After forty-five minutes of unsuccessful searching he finally gave up and said "You are free to go" with a big grin on his face. Not only this, but he helped himself to one of the 'rastapharianism' CD's and wished us best of luck for our travels.

We walked outside, our truck gone, back at square one, and a dusty soccer game on behind us. Somehow we couldn't but wonder if Matthews was behind all this and maybe he was less of a laugh than we initially thought.