Aug11 Written by:Kayle
8/11/2008 9:13 AM
Mat and I have been looking forward to our South African get away for many weeks now! We drove down to Pretoria today with another Australian couple from our church, Jodi and Andrew. Though we left at 5am and got to the Beitbridge border at 8am, the line on the SA side was already super long--the longest I've ever seen it! And there were even two lines! The last time we were at the border, they let us to the front of the line since we had a newborn baby. So I went up to an officer to ask him if I could get to the front with my newborn. He said, "Is there anything wrong with the baby?" "No," I replied. "Then get to the back of the line." So we joined the line that seemed the shortest. And we waited and waited for hours in a line that was not moving.
At one point, I went out to the car with Calvin and saw a car pull up beside us to park. About 45 minutes later, the driver got back in his car to leave. I asked him how he got through the border so fast. He said, "There are tricks," implying that he paid someone a bribe. It turns out that the border patrol officers were taking a 100 rand ($13) bribe per person, which would get one to the front of the line! This was why our line wasn't moving. A border patrol officer could easily make $1250 a day by taking bribes!
After about 4 hours of waiting, I noticed an old white man standing with walker/crutches and asked him if he had asked to go to the front of the line (typically pregnant women, women with small babies and elderly people are allowed to go to the front of the line). He said no. So I told him that I would ask on his behalf. I found a different border patrol officer and told her that my "father" was crippled and asked if he could come to the front of the line. She said yes, so I escorted my adopted father and mother to the front of the line where we got our passport stamped in minutes! Amazing. We arrived to Pretoria at 6:30pm, in time to bath Calvin and put him to sleep. We wondered how long we would have waited had we not found our "father" in line and continued to wait while people jumped the line in front of us for $13/person.
I told this story to some friends in Zimbabwe and they laughed at me saying, "You weren't lying, Kayle, but you were showing that you really are becoming African as all elderly can be referred to as your "father"! HA!
Tags: