Zambia World Wide

I discovered later that a high percentage of the Federation officers, unsettled by the prospect of serving under African management, had taken their pensions, gratuities and chattels southwards at a substantial lick, leaving a bureaucratic hiatus which people like me had been speedily recruited to fill. Add to that shortages of basic essentials, like rubber stamps, uniforms and correct documentation, plus a discordant element of on-the-job training to satisfy Zambianisation requirements and the reasons for the very long line of the weary and increasingly disgruntled became apparent. Crippled and dehydrated, still over-dressed for central Africa and not a little concerned that my entire contract would be spent in the line for immigration at Lusaka airport, my excitement started to diminish a tad.

Then a miracle happened. A vision of near military smartness, not a centimetre less immaculately attired than the gunnery sergeant in Full Metal Jacket, but several years older, marched crisply up the queue and announced my name. Actually, that's not true. First he sneered, second he positioned his eyes heavenwards, the better to impress the simpering female Zambia Airways onlookers and then he bellowed my name. I thought that the Collector of Customs had come to collect me personally and immediately went into servile mode, snapping my aching extremities into some form of stiffness -well, not all of them - and began obediently trotting along behind him, like a wee, well-behaved West Highland terrier, if such an example of that strutting breed could ever exist.

He certainly appeared to have authority, because, in no time at all, we emerged, blinking against unaccustomed sunshine, into the automobile maelstrom that was the front of old Lusaka Airport on VC10 day: he striding purposefully towards the official vehicle area and I, hurrying along behind, hauling the giant case that my mother had overfilled with garments designed to protect against all known Arctic diseases.

Still, I had entered the country with no scrutiny of paperwork, no stamp on passport and no examination of luggage. It was a shockingly impressive example of short-circuitry of interfering officialdom and, duly, I was disturbingly impressed. The scales only started to fall from my eyes, when I saw his mode of transport: a scruffy Morris 1000 traveller with GRZ plates and more dents than an Essex stock car. Even in penurious Britain, we customs officers had chunky Land-Rovers. Blimey, even my Dad, who would have had trouble qualifying to drive Miss Daisy, had an Austin Cambridge; but it looked like my future battles against Central African diamond smugglers or tobacco desperados would be supported by the same type of transport that maiden ladies drove to Evensong in Tunbridge Wells.

I didn't have long to ponder on car marque quality, however, as my senior saviour immediately turned to me and said that'll cost you eight rounds of Castle Pilsner and four whisky chasers for the Immigration and Customs Officers, young man. And you owe me a pound for the man who's been watching the car.*

I had met Bryson: self-appointed eminence grise, part- time official greeter/chauffeur, part-time (junior) customs official and full-time panhandling shyster. An hour in the country and I was down several quid for drinks for people I didn't know.

But at least I was in. Things would be more normal from now on, wouldn't they? Wouldn't they??

*(I should have questioned as to why anyone could be so desperate for entertainment that they would want to spend any time at all observing a sort of skip with wheels, even for modest remuneration, but I never thought of that, until writing this recollection some 45 years afterwards. Slow uptake runs in my family)

COPYRIGHT: GERRY HODES 2011

Episode #3: The Scots Lad Journeys Southwards