by Clay Wilson
She told me she would check, and called their head office in Gaborone. Yes, she said after she ended the call, the letter was genuine, and it was the president’s handwritten signature on the original.
I called Kgomotso on my cellphone from the office and he told me he knew nothing about this latest development. It was as much of a surprise to him as it was to me. When I phoned Laura she said Mogau had just been to our house. “He’s got a copy of your new contract with him for you to sign,” she said.
This was bizarre. One branch of the government had a legal document that would again formalise my work with the national park saving wildlife, while the executive had just ordered me out of the country!
“Well, I’m stuck here in the immigration office and I’m not sure what’s going to happen. You’d better come down here and get the car,” I said.
When Laura arrived, however, the immigration officers would not let her into the office because they had been told that I was not allowed to receive visitors. I called my business partner and my call went through to voicemail. I telephoned Kgomotso again, but he was in and out of court and unavailable, so I left a message for him. “There’s nothing we can do at the moment,” he told me when he got back to me.
“Great.”
The immigration officers took me to Kasane police station in their bakkie. I was in shock as they walked me in. I was told I would be detained until I could be deported from the country. I walked in a daze into the station, where I was fingerprinted, like a common criminal. I wasn’t shouting or being outwardly emotional in any way, because there was nothing I could do. In a way, it was almost like all this was happening to someone else, and that I was looking on.
Slowly, though, I felt my hopes fading and they seemed to dwindle with the repetitive “beep” of my cellphone as the last of my battery power drained away. I stared at the blank screen. It was like in those tv shows where the end is signalled by the flat-lining of the ecg machine. Beep, beep, beep. Then silence.
The immigration guys took me back to their office, where I was kept – now completely out of contact with the outside world – until five o’clock, when it was time for them to finish work. A police van arrived at that time and I was taken outside to it and put in the locked cage in the back. It was hot in there and I couldn’t open any of the windows, of course, and there were no seats, so I sat on the bare metal of the truck’s bed.
The weird thing was that I knew all of these people, the police and immigration officers who were processing me, but everyone was completely deadpan. They were just doing their job and I had instantaneously morphed from a member of their community and part of the National Parks team to a common felon.
The cops took me to Kasane prison. I’d passed it hundreds, maybe thousands, of times on my daily trips around town to go shopping or to treat animals, and I had never given the place or the people who resided within its walls a second thought. And now I was being led through its gates. A lone warder processed my transition from citizen to inmate, taking my belt and wallet and filling in some paperwork. By now it was dark, although the heat of the day had barely abated. My mouth was dry and my stomach grumbled. I hadn’t eaten or drunk a thing since the immigration officers had come to collect me at 11 that morning.
The police left and the prison officer escorted me from reception across a courtyard. We stopped by a table piled with blankets. “Take two,” he said. Like the cops, he was polite and efficient, yet uncaring of my plight.
As yet, there was no sign of other prisoners; they were already in lock-down. The officer took me into the nearest cellblock and unlocked a door. Inside there were 15 men, all lying on the floor already. They were lying in rows, side by side, and the room was packed solid; all of the floor space was covered. A couple of guys shifted, bunching up, and made a small space. There was a bathroom at the end of the cell, but I was too scared to even think about going in there.
“Use one of your blankets as a mattress and put the other over you,” the man lying next to me said.
It was the hottest time of the year and I was sweating as I lay there on the coarse blanket. A couple of the guys started asking questions, the predictable stuff about why I was there. I was the only white man in the cell, probably in the whole prison, and I had naturally aroused some interest. No one was aggressive or nasty, but I kept my answers to simple yes and no responses. At nine o’clock the lights were switched off.
The next morning the guards opened the door at about six and we all had to file out into the courtyard and get down on our knees to be counted. I was groggy and had no idea what the routine was. I don’t know if I slept at all that first night in jail.
There were about 200 prisoners in the yard and, as I had predicted, mine was the only white face. Breakfast was served in an open-sided room. Big pots of mealiepap were cooking over a fire, but I had never developed a taste for this staple of the majority of people in southern Africa. Instead, I was handed a piece of bread and a cup of tea, which was laced with milk and sugar. The food, meagre as it was, helped me as I was starving.
Laura showed up at the prison at about 8 am and asked to see me. With her was our local doctor, a friend of mine. She had found out that the authorities planned to drive me all the way from Kasane to Gaborone, a journey of about a thousand kilometres, in the back of a prison truck. Laura had brought the doctor with her so that he could hand deliver a letter to the warden saying that I had a heart condition and that I should not be transported like that, in the back of a van with no air conditioning. I do take heart medication and I agreed with the assessment that in the November heat such a trip would not do me good.
The doctor said I should be transported to the capital by air, but when a call was made to the immigration offices the reply was that the authorities did not have enough money to buy me a plane ticket to Gaborone.
“The hell with it,” I told them. “I’ll pay for my own damn ticket.” All I wanted was to get out of jail and away from that place. Calls were made and a seat booked on the flight to the capital that afternoon. I paid for the ticket.
I was released into the custody of the immigration officers who were supposed to drive me to Gaborone and instead of them taking me straight to the airport I managed to convince them that I needed to be taken to my home first, to collect some clothes and some medication, as per my doctor’s letter. When we got home I left them outside. Laura and I went in and I packed a carry-on bag with a couple of pairs of pants and shorts and some shirts. I also grabbed cigarettes, some bottles of antibiotics and painkillers, and my camera and computer.
The aircraft was due to leave just after two in the afternoon. I still had some time, so I had a bath – my first in two days – and lay down on top of the bed for a little while as the immigration officers kept watch outside in case I made a run for it.
Laura was in tears. “Why is this happening, Clay?”
I wanted to ask the same question; I’d been given no specific reasons why the president wanted me gone. I was trying to stay strong for Laura and was holding up okay until I went outside to say goodbye to our dogs. I knew there was a very good chance I would never see them again, and had no clue what might happen to them all if the government succeeded in deporting me from Botswana.
I felt myself start to unravel as I scratched under their chins and ruffled their ears, saying goodbye to each one in turn. All nine dogs, the zebra and a young sable we had also recently rescued received sloppy kisses and hugs from me. I went inside and got my bag with my medicines and Laura drove me to the airport, with the immigration goons tailing close behind. Once there I was led to the police office and Laura could come no further, as I was to be detained until the flight departed.
She was still crying, as was I by then.
“I love you, Clay.”
I was escorted to the twin-engine Air Botswana aircraft, but there were no guards with me on board. Crazily, I flirted with the idea of trying to give them all the slip when I reached Gaborone, but there was nowhere
for me to run.
In any case, when the plane landed at Gaborone, there was a policeman and two immigration guys waiting at the foot of the stairs. They were big dudes and they took me across the tarmac and into the terminal, to the second floor. It was the immigration office and there were about 10 officers in there, men and women, all in uniform. A woman gave me the original of the letter that had been faxed to me and, sure enough, in blue ink was the signature of President Ian Khama, authorising the order for me to be banned from Botswana. What had I done to this man and his people? Why did they hate me so?
The woman told me I could expect to be in prison in Gaborone for seven days.
“That’s nonsense.” The facade of calm I had created to keep myself strong was starting to crack. If I thought about it – and it was hard for me to think straight, as I really had no idea what was going on – I guess I thought that once I reached Gaborone I would be waiting in transit until they put me on another plane to South Africa and then back to the United States of America. “What for? What have I done wrong?” “That’s the way it is,” she said. “You will be held until we can process your deportation and arrange your flights.”
I did not get the sense that this woman took any pleasure in her job, but nor was I feeling any sympathy. From what I was learning, through my conversations with people in my earlier trip to Gaborone, what I was going through was not uncommon. The president of Botswana could and did exercise his right to have people deported and banned from his country. No doubt this was done for good reason, and all I wanted was to be told what I had done wrong. Perhaps then I could fight the presidential order.
I was able to call Laura from the airport. “I’m all right. I’m just going to be in jail for seven days, that’s all.”
She freaked out. I tried calling my business partner and his wife again but, like before, my calls went through to voicemail. I called Kgomotso, who was again in between court appearances.
“I’ll be at the prison as soon as I can,” he said.
From the terminal I was taken outside and put in the cage in the back of a police van. It was 4 pm and it felt like the vehicle had been baking in the sun all day. As with the other van I had been in, there were no windows. I chain-smoked cigarettes as we drove, but the vehicle stopped after a short trip. I peered through the slits in the locked compartment and saw we were parked outside some ministerial building. I was kept there for 45 minutes while one of the guards attended to business inside.
“Hey, how about some water in here?” The heat was even more intense now that we had stopped moving. The guards did nothing for me, and I gave up trying to get their attention. I was no one special, no one different, just another con for them to transport.
The prison was in the middle of Gaborone, surrounded by high concrete walls. Driving in, from the glimpses I got through the slits in the police van, it looked fairly modern. I was let out of the truck and taken to a processing room where my bag was emptied. The guard asked me about my bottles of pills.
“They’re for my heart condition and my cholesterol. I need all of those.” In fact, I had no need of the antibiotics or the painkillers I had packed, but the guard didn’t seem to know the difference between any of the medications. I figured they might come in handy.
There was no strip search; I was frisked and then made to walk through a scanner. There was only one officer processing me and, just as when I had arrived at Kasane prison, it was getting dark and the place was in lock-down. I still couldn’t believe I was having this bad dream. I don’t remember being frightened, just disorientated.
I was, however, getting angry. I thought about what would happen to Laura, not to mention all my veterinary equipment, my boat and my vehicles. I could not believe that two days earlier I had been out rescuing animals and had been about to sign my new contract as a bush vet, and now I was facing the prospect of losing everything that I had spent my life working for.
I had never been fined or charged for any of the minor infractions over which Thuto had reprimanded me. I had committed no criminal offence and, as far as I knew, not a word had been said about me getting into the fire fight with the ivory poachers. Even on that front I felt I had nothing to worry about; I had fired on the man to save my life and the day had been a resounding success for the BDF, of which the president was the commander-in-chief.
“My lawyer is coming to see me this evening,” I said to the guard processing me.
He shook his head. “No, he is not coming. It is too late now. We lock down the jail from Friday afternoon over the weekend until Monday morning. No visitors are allowed over the weekend.”
Now that freaked me out. “No way!” The jailer reiterated that it would be Monday before I could see Kgomotso and that it would be five days after that before I would be deported to the us. It was cruel and I wondered if this was some further punishment for whatever I had done. Later I would speak to people who told me it was not uncommon for people to be locked up on a Friday so that they would have to spend extra time in jail without their lawyer. The president’s letter had been signed two days before it was faxed to the immigration office in Kasane. Was the delay deliberate, I wondered. How petty, if it was.
The guard took me across a courtyard to a different building, which was the commandant’s office. There was a charge counter in there. I said, “I need my medicine and my overnight bag.”
The guy passed the bag across the counter and told me to take what I needed for the night. I palmed a handful of assorted pills from the bottles and put them in my pocket. I was wearing the same clothes I had left Kasane in, my khaki shorts and bush shirt, but I was not allowed to take any of my other clothes with me, or my overnight bag. On my feet was a pair of Crocs.
Next I was escorted to the cellblock. We passed through two gates: the first closed behind me while the second was unlocked. To the left was an open area where some guys, who I later found out were trustees, were lounging around. Everyone else was locked down.
I was given my regulation two blankets again, and a piece of bread and a bottle of water. In my angry, distressed state I was pathetically grateful for the small mercy of food and something to drink. There were cells in rows along both sides of a long hallway and a big tower rising high above us to the left. At the end of the corridors was a shower and toilet block. Inmates were whistling catcalls from slits in their cell doors as I walked along with the warden.
“Hey, white man! What you doing here?”
“We’ll have you for breakfast! Ha ha ha.”
I was trying not to listen to them. I said to the guard, “Are these guys okay?”
“You will be fine here.”
It was still the same guard who had processed me, and he was the only officer I saw that night. It seemed the place must operate on a skeleton crew over the weekend and I wondered what would happen if someone did attack me in here – would this guy be the only person around to respond? It didn’t fill me with confidence.
I was taken to a cell and the guard took a key from his belt and opened the door. There were 18 men in there; eight lying down each side of the long room and two lying end on end in the middle, between the other guys’ feet. As in Kasane prison, the floor space was covered and a couple of guys had to shift to allow me to squeeze in.
The inmates were dressed in a mix of plain clothes – for new arrivals like me, I guessed – and blue-and-yellow-striped uniforms for the long-timers. There was some movement in the cell as space was made for me, and four of the guys got up and went to the toilet at the far end of the block. They beckoned me over.
I was nervous, but as when I’d worked with the rangers in the bush I knew that I could not show fear or weakness, or I would be history. I weaved my way through the prone bodies to the end of the cellblock. My nerve endings were tingling and I tried to tell myself I was ready for anything that was about to happen.
The four, all big guys, crowded around me. “There are rules here,” one said.
“Okay. W
hat are the rules?”
“Do not touch another man’s stuff. And you must sit down to urinate.”
I guessed the pissing rule was to minimise noise so as not to disturb the other inmates at night, and to not mess all over the place. There were other rules that were recited to me, but they went in one ear and out the other. I guess those two rules must have been the most important, because I still remember them.
The quartet of felons crowded around me as they told me what was what. None of them touched me, but their close proximity had the desired effect; I was intimidated, though I tried not to show it. I had to be strong to survive this. I had come from a place where the weak were prey, and where predators took each other out to eliminate the competition. I could do this, I told myself.
When their briefing was done I went back to the spot that had been cleared for me on the floor. At about 8.30 pm, not long before lights-out, space was made in the centre of the cell and a newspaper was produced and its sheets laid out on the floor like a tablecloth. All of the prisoners started taking out morsels of food, which they had wrapped and squirrelled away on themselves or among their meagre piles of possessions. I wondered if they didn’t get food on a Friday night, and what they had saved was their dinner.
“Why are you here?” The man next to me asked what must surely be the most common question in any prison in the world.
“I have no clue.”
The guys laughed, but at the same time shook their heads dismissively, as though that was quite a normal response. Out of politeness, I asked the same question of the guy next to me.
“I am in for molesting children.”
Okay, right. “And you?” I asked the man seated alongside him, who was picking a few crumbs of bread from his shirt and savouring them.
“Myself? I murdered my wife.”
A few more joined the conversation, but I can’t remember what all their crimes were. The bottom line was that I was locked up with a bunch of hardened convicts – murderers and rapists and God-knew-what-else. This was not some facility for foreigners awaiting deportation or people waiting for their cases to be tried; this was hardcore, maximum, and I, who had neither broken a law nor been charged with doing so, had been left in with them, unsupervised.