story designed to scare my parents

Here were go again. Another border-crossing adventure (this one’s a doozy):

On our way back to Zambia from Zimbabwe, we were supposed to get picked up for free by the Jollyboys hostel. But would have to wait 40 minutes at the border. So the five of us (Kase, Talya, Emma, Anna, and I) hopped in a cab instead. The driver first seemed uncomfortable taking five but agreed to drive us on the condition that Talya ducks when we pass the police checking point.

After driving for 3 minutes, he pulls over to the side of the road. He didn’t want to get fined for having extra people, so he thinks the most logical solution is for two of us to get out of the car. Driver's plan: drop of two now, pass the police, drop the rest of us on the other side, come back to pick up those two, cross the police again, and then pick everyone up so we can go on our way. We yell at him about how this was not agreed upon originally, but Emma and Kase nevertheless get out of the car at a viewing point of Victoria Falls.

Now it’s me, Talya and Anna driving past the checking point. Evidently, the police couldn’t care less and aren’t even paying attention to us. Our driver starts chuckling to himself, while I mutter a string of audible objections, including “this is absolutely ridiculous,” “this is actually not funny,” and “there’s no way you can expect us to pay full price for this shit." He keeps driving and driving further away from our stranded friends, with the justification that there isn’t a safe. By safe, he meant far enough away that the police wouldn’t catch onto his scheme. Talk about irony.

Finally he pulls over to the side of the road. This is when Talya aptly realizes we can’t leave this guy alone with all of our bags in the trunk. I volunteered to stay. So Talya and Anna are on the side of the road, while I return with the driver to pick up the friends we had left behind.

The driver and I return back towards the border, the entire time stressed because now I’m alone in a taxi with all of our bags and have no way of contacting my friends (our SA cell phones don’t work there). We stop at the point we left Emma and Kase, only to find three Zambian men in their place. They speak Tonga to the driver, while I yell at him to tell me what’s going on. Apparently, the police picked them up. The men don’t know where they went.

Before I know it, the taxi driver is off on the side of the road once more, talking to a man in a yellow pick-up truck in Tonga, and begins to shuttle our backs into the back of his "friends" truck. He tells me to get in, that he’s going to look for my friends with the police. I’m confused, angry, and now a little scared. But it doesn’t seem like I have much of a choice. So I get in this car, now driving back to the second spot, not knowing where any of my friends are, with a stranger in a yellow pickup truck, and all of our valuables in the back.

I strike up some conversation with Gabrielle, the yellow-pickup-truck-driver. Gabrielle was an innocent bystander who had never met that cabbie before, but wasn't too surprised about the ordeal. I joke about how this is extremely dangerous and how for all I know he’s a serial killer…Okay, so it’s not really funny. We drive back past the police check point and keep driving to the spot we left Anna and Talya. Then we pass it with no one in sight again. So now I’m really freaking out. Alone and have no idea where any of my friends are.

We’re driving along and in the distance I see too figures walking towards us: Emma and Kase! They had been picked up by a taxi cab full of police(?!) who said it wasn’t safe where they were and were dropped off at the next look-out point. After I’d transferred to the yellow pick up truck, they saw the first taxi driver pass them alone and were convinced that he had all of our stuff and was escaping back to Zim. They soon realized that we wouldn’t have been able to find them at another point, so they started walking back to the first, which is when Gabrielle and I found them.

Anyway, we flag them over, they hop in the back of the truck with all of our bags. We keep driving, I’m still freaking out in my head because I still don’t know where Talya and Anna are. We turn around and the Jollyboys van is behind us with Anna and Talya inside! They’d hailed the free ride we were all supposed to have taken, and could have taken if we'd just waited. Anna's face is pretty representative of all of our reactions. We spent the rest of the drive back rehashing how crazy it all was. Two baboons also happened to casually run by during this time.

So all was well. But it could have gone a million times wrong. Safe and sound at the Jollyboys pool. Mosi was needed and well deserved.