Tunduma Border: Stickers, Stamps & Scams

In contrast to our last border crossing, getting into Zambia took us 5 hours, 51 minutes and 39 seconds….. to be exact.  To sum it up in one word: BONKERS!

 

Coming into Tunduma, you are met with at least 5km of heavy lorry traffic, the first indication that you are not alone in your plans to get to Zambia. 

 

Our experience went a bit as follows:

After joining the border crossing que, miles out of town, we finally get through the maze of roundabouts, unclear signs, swarms of people, and park in a wee compound that would be our base for the next six hours.  I don’t know what it is about borders, but regardless of where you are in the world in seems to attract a certain type of opportunist entrepreneur (ie. shenzie thieving bastards).  As we park, the world and his uncle crowd around the car – do you need an agent? Do you need insurance? A Sim card? Do you want to change money?

 

Our plan is always – Colin goes and gets his immigration & car papers done ,whilst Laura looks after the car, and then we swap. In response to all the madness – all the car windows get rolled up, and I sit and bake for a good while until people lose interest in us.

 

We usually don’t get agents involved when crossing borders and find it easier to do it ourselves, but we had been warned by lots of friends who had run this gauntlet previous to us, that getting an agent was the way to go.  So when Paul, the owner of the campsite in Mbeya gave us his agents contact details, we thought we were ahead of the game. Oscar the agent was his name.  Only when we got to the border, we found out that Oscar is not an agent – hes a dealer in seeds – but he was happy to swing by, check us out, and point us in the direction of his agent – some chap called Badrass (?).  Paul, who later checked in on us, apologized for giving us the wrong number and three hours into the whole process gave us a different contact, but by this stage we were not going to start again!

 

The ‘process’ seemed to be going alright until the customs man went for lunch. In this part of the world when an official goes for lunch – there is no replacement to man his desk for the 2 hours he needs to eat & digest – it just sucks to be you – get over it.

 

With plenty of time on our hands – Col gets chatting with random guys passing by including one dodgy chap with a matted beard, and missing tooth.  Give him a parrot and a peg leg and he would have looked like a seedy character out of pirates of Caribbean.  Turns out this Charlie sells stickers and Col is in the market for flag stickers to add to our car. After plenty of chit chat he says he will be back with a sticker.  Exit sticker man.

 

Still no sign of customs man, and the extra time & boredom makes us think maybe we should break our rules and opt to get a sim card and change enough money for a tank of fuel.  Good idea? We get chatting to some shady fella who seemed nice enough, and asked what his rate of exchange was.  It wasn’t terrible, and for convenience we opt to change $100 the idea being that by the time we get out of here, all banks will be closed, and if we need fuel – we will need money. So we exchange our money and don’t think much more of it until there is a wee bit of confusion when it comes to the Zambian Kwacha and what its worth – we got given 50K notes – was that 50,000, which is what we thought it should be, or was it simply 50?  Did I really just give a man $100 to be given 10 cents back in dirty foreign currency?  To say I felt like a complete fool is an understatement.  I got google involved – what does the 50,000 kwacha note look like vs the 50K? In short – the notes are exactly the same – same leopard, same building, same colors, same eagle, but one has the zeros and the other doesn’t.  We have all heard the expression ‘whats a zero between friends?’ In this case – it was my pride!

 

As we are doing our investigations – a police car rocks up and Col goes to ask them – how much is this note worth?  Rather than answer the question, he complicates matters a little more…

Police man:        How much did you change?

Colin:                  $100 

Police man:        Did you get a stash of cash about this big?  Spacing his thumb and forefingers quite far apart.

Colin:                   No.. about this big.. decreasing size between forefinger and thumb. 

 

Based on that mathematical analysis the policeman concludes that we were robbed….. but he is traffic police so we need to report it to the police station – in other words – tell someone who cares (insert lots of swear words here). 

 

The next hour I am feeling all the feels, but mostly I am embarrassed that I let this happen to us.  How could I be this dumb?  Am left reeling in the baking hot car. Colin has seen customs man has returned, but the system is now down – so ‘you just wait’ is what we are told.

 

Whilst all this is going on – return sticker man.  He has arrived back to our car with a flag.  He appreciates its not a sticker, but what a lovely flag he has found for us, in the arse end of nowhere.  He tells us he took a taxi just to get there.  You can feel where this is going – we pay him the equivalent of $4.50 for his flag and his taxi drive and he skips off feeling more jovial than we are.  We do get the giggles and  conclude, clearly we are not the savy travellers we thought we were.  I agree with Col, that I will never change money at the border again if he doesn’t send weirdos off to do his shopping.

 

Colin goes back to find out about car papers – system is back (YAY) but now there is a back log of frustrated people and things are moving at glacial speed (less yay!).  Whilst Colin is in a line and I am festering in the car – a monster punch up breaks out between two drunken youths, that the police take under control by making them sit in the naughty boy corner with their heads under a running tap.  The placement of random tap, and tooled up policeman, indicates this must happen all the time.

 

Enter money changing man again.  I cant believe he is happy to show his face – so I call him over pretending I want to change more money.  He can’t believe his luck.  When he comes to the car, I ask him very very nicely to please give me my $100 dollars back and that I know I was part of a scam.  In the corner of my eye, I also see Colin coming back to the car so my game plan is to keep slim shady chatting until there is two of us and we can hopefully reverse my bad decision.  Col appears, and matey stays put… doesn’t run away….. looks confused.  I even go as far as offering him 20,000 tanzanian shillings to give us our $100 back…. Now he is really confused…. And then it all falls into place…. unbeknown to us, recently the currency just got rid of 3 zeros and 50,000 Kwacha is now simply 50 kwacha. The note is exactly the same minus the zeros. Turns out we were not scammed!!!! YYYAAAYYY!!!

I apologize profusely to money changing man who finds this all very funny, and just to double check, wants to know if I still want my $100 back for 20,000 tsh? 

 

An hour after all this – car papers are stamped, agent is paid, and we are back on the road again with $100 worth of Kwacha, a working sim card, and a Zambian flag that will act as a reminder that not all border people are seedy shady bastards, don’t always listen to google, and being kind goes a long way.

 

The highway on the other side of the border was new and like a race track, which was a huge relief as it was now starting to get dark.  Google maps (thanks to new sim card) helped us find the turning to the Kings way campsite which was a gem of a find after such a hectic day!

 

To tops things off – a message arrived in the middle of the night, hours after it was sent, to say that my brother and his amazing wife, gave birth to a healthy baby boy. 

 

Welcome to the world little Thomas!