Shortly after it had opened, a good friend sent me some pictures of the Kazungula Bridge that links Bohts-wah-nah to Zambia. The bridge stretches for 923 metres over the Zam-bay-zee River. It cost US$259 million and was co-funded by the regional governments and supported by the Japan International Cooperation Agency and the African Development Bank.
It’s an amazing and humongous structure that has opened up the trade routes between South Africa and many of the countries in Central Africa, and it has certainly been a massive boost to the region.
But the news took me back to the days when Kah-sah-neh, which is the northernmost town in Bohts-wah-nah and the home of the Bohts-wah-nah customs post at Kazungula, included the border post, a gravel main street, a small single-storey hotel on the banks of the Cho-bee River, and a trading store a few hundred metres down the road towards the entrance to the Cho-bee National Park.
Today it is a major tourist destination with a number of ultra-modern five-star hotels along the riverbanks, shops, banks, and a fabulous local market where we bought fresh bream that had come straight out of the river for the camp fire. It is the gateway to the Cho-bee National Park to the west and Zim-bah-bweh and Victoria Falls to the east, while the river tours are on a scale as awe-inspiring as anything the Serengeti has to offer.
We have visited northern Bohts-wah-nah on a number of occasions, but one visit stands out in particular. On this trip we were accompanied by our good friends Ken and Inge Symmons, with whom we had set up camp in a camp site called Toro Lodge.
The following is an excerpt from an article I wrote at the time.
Two rivers and four countries, Bogosi, our local guide from Toro Lodge announced as he deftly manoeuvred the motorboat into Zimbabwean waters immediately downstream from the Kazungula Ferry and shut down the motor.
As the boat turned slowly, we could see the easternmost point of Nah-mib-ee-ah’s Caprivi Strip dead ahead. To our right lay Zambia and the mighty Zam-bay-zee River. To our left, Bohts-wah-nah and the great Cho-bee River. Behind us Zim-bah-bweh and the Zam-bay-zee, now swollen to almost twice its normal size, surged forward towards the world-famous Victoria Falls, locally known as Moh-see oh-ah Toon-yah (the smoke that thunders), not seventy kilometres downriver.
The four of us had visited the Victoria Falls many times in the past, so on this occasion we decided to take the ferry across the river and see what the falls looked like from the Zambian side. The Kazungula crossing has been the main route for freight to and from South Africa and Central Africa for many decades because the more direct route across the Limpopo on South Africa’s northern border at Bate-bridge and via Zim-bah-bweh was dangerous for many years during the Rhodesian Bush War. Subsequent to the political handover that gave birth to Zim-bah-bweh, the journey became progressively impractical and uneconomical as Zim-bah-bweh became an increasingly broken country.
Long lines of heavy-duty haulage trucks and trailers could be found queued for kilometres back down the so-called ‘elephant highway’ that connects Francistown and Kah-sah-neh, all of them duly waiting their turn to be loaded onto the ferry and carried across the river.
The ferry operators organized two lanes of traffic so as to afford ordinary motor vehicles an opportunity to share each run with one of the pantechnicons. In this way, tourists like us and other travellers could avoid too long a delay at the ferry. In addition, many local pedestrians would make use of the ferry to cross over from one country to the other. So, it was no surprise that we met a hive of activity when we pulled up in our 4x4 at the river’s edge at the crack of dawn.
We were second in the queue and after a twenty-minute wait for the barge to dock in front of us, we were finally ushered to drive on board. Once on board we were required to get out of the vehicle and stand on the deck next to the railing for the duration of the crossing.
A young, smartly dressed African approached me and produced a business card that announced that he was Mr Kenneth Jilele, of Jilele and Associates, immigration agents. He was warm and friendly and enquired whether we were tourists.
Yes, I replied. We are on our way to Livingstone for the day from where we want to take a look at the Victoria Falls.
Mr Jilele asked me to call him Kenneth and proceeded to deliver a well-oiled sales pitch on the difficulties, frustrations, and delays we were about to encounter at the Zambia border post and that for a small fee of five hundred kwacha (US$15) he would provide an end-to-end service in double quick time. He would pay for our visitors’ visas and road taxes out of his own pocket and would require no up-front funding to execute the service. We would avoid all of the queues and the delays so could just sit patiently in the car until he returned which, he said, would take little time.
I am an old hand in the ways of Africa, and this wasn’t the first time we had needed to cross a busy border in Southern Africa. It wasn’t so much the benefit of being speedily processed that attracted me but rather the inexplicably and inordinately lengthy delays that would almost certainly arise if I declined his kind offer. We shook hands and we had ourselves an agent!
I turned to my team once back in the vehicle. Can anyone guess in what manner we are about to be taken? I asked mischievously. But after mulling it over for a few minutes they were unable to work it out.
The ferry barge chugged its way across the Zam-bay-zee and finally came to crunching halt against the slipway on the Zambian side. Kenneth directed us to a parking spot near the gate of the border post compound and beckoned me to accompany him with all our documents. We disappeared into the lines of queuing people, many of whom were carrying bags, some young children strapped to their mother’s backs, and in some cases a goat or two on a rope.
Kenneth weaved his way through the crowds and eventually presented us to the immigration window where our visas were promptly issued against the payment made by Kenneth. Then we moved directly to another window where we were presented with an invoice for road tax and another for carbon tax, all of which were duly settled by Kenneth. Without further delay I returned to the vehicle and waited for Kenneth to join us.
We watched Kenneth as he strolled across the road towards us, accompanied by a gigantic chap who had was evidently a bodybuilder of note. Kenneth presented his invoice, which was accurately made up of the visas, road tax, and carbon tax amounts, all in US dollar currency. Below the total was a Zambian kwacha amount to which he had added the five-hundred-kwacha service fee. It all looked to be above board and we settled the account, quite thankful that we had escaped the delays and queues and had been processed in no time at all, just as Kenneth had promised.
The trick, I discovered, was that Kenneth used a marginally inflated rate of exchange with which to convert the dollar cost to Zambian kwacha! Clever and laudable I thought and still not an unreasonable price to pay for the service provided.
I jumped out of the car and gestured to Kenneth that I wanted Ann to take a photograph of the two of us so I could show my friends back home what a top immigration agent looks like. He willingly agreed. As we stood with our arms around each other’s shoulders, the big guy with the bulging muscles stepped up alongside Kenneth and joined in the photograph with a broad beaming smile.
Who is this fellow? I asked
Oh! Kenneth replied with a wry smile. He is my agent!