May 2005

In May Alex becomes buried in a quagmire of paperwork . . .

Wednesday, 11 May 2005

"Once again I have neglected this document for too long. I’ve been busy doing stuff and ten days have passed without much progress as far as camp is concerned.

"I had my meeting with the Zambia National Tourist Board at which I finally met the Chairman Ms Chilola Lumpa and she brought in the Development Officer Evans Mweebo and the Legal guy Stein Liyanda. They were all very enthusiastic about my project and explained exactly what I should have done in the first place which is to come in as an Investor. I suppose I only have myself to blame for this as I knew I could have taken that route but was reluctant to do so because I am an author not a businessman in my head but that is not a concept acceptable to Zambian bureaucracy. So it is onward and upward with the paperwork as I draw up an investment partnership agreement with CHICODA which I’ll come back to later.

"So anyway, the paperwork that I am now in the process of preparing is a five page agreement with CHICODA to establish an Investment Partnership to develop an area within Community Camp as a self-catering tented facility, a letter from CHICODA to the Zambia Investment Authority introducing me as their partner and an amendment to the lease to take into account the new site position. I took the draft papers up to Chiawa village yesterday as Patros felt ill and needed to go home for a while. Isiah looked at the papers and seemed to be happy with them but I think that the Investment Partnership took him by surprise and he wants to call a big meeting to run through the document and discuss it. Again it comes back to making sure that I have all the papers legal and above board for the Zambian authorities so that I cannot end up in any awkward positions during my stay or over who has rights to the campsite in the short term. This time I must try and remember to keep my brain in gear and not give away too much in the heat of the day and ins and outs of the negotiations."

Saturday, 21 May 2005

"Most of the rest f the week was spent trotting between the Investment Centre or sitting in the Immigration Office in Cairo Road waiting for my permit to be renewed. It was hard to remain calm in that appalling place as my papers just did not seem to go anywhere for two days. The office is in a tall 1960s building definitely Government style. There is a dark grubby thoroughly worn carpet that makes the place look even shabbier than it would if the floor had been left bare. The desks where the clerks sit are old wooden affairs that were probably second hand when the building was new, sticks drooping from underneath suggesting that in the past drawers may have been in place that have long since collapsed or been used for other things such as seating for clients. I spent a couple of hours perched on an upturned file drawer that served as the only place to sit in the booth to which I had been assigned to wait for I knew not what. The junior civil servants seemed completely unmotivated and listless coming to life only to chat amiably with their colleagues about subjects unrelated to the process of immigration. I rarely saw a file open or a person actually doing something productive. The initial clerk to whom I had been assigned initially told me that my file was lost, at least not where it was supposed to be in the filing system and suggested opening a new application which I refused to contemplate. Hours later, as I sat, on a wooden bench only slightly more comfortable than the upturned drawer, quietly refusing to leave the office till something happened, he discovered the file sitting under a newspaper on his own desk.

"I thought that now I would get the stamp I needed – after all I had handed over more than $500 dollars in renewal fees. I was very wrong. The following morning, when I returned as the office doors were opened, I asked where my file was now. No-one was helpful and I had to stand in the corridor asking anyone in uniform whether they could help me, a clerk actually told me that if I continued to push them they would simply refuse my permit. I returned to my fallback technique of haunting presence, saying nothing but just leaning over the dividing barrier watching the clerks chatter amongst themselves until someone became uncomfortable enough to search out my documents.

"Eventually it was discovered in the investigations office. The Regional Immigration Officer had refused to extend the permit because I had no Investment Licence or Zambia Wildlife Authority permit to operate. I had to return the following day with a fat sheaf of papers showing that the reason that I required the extension was precisely in order to get those documents and with the veiled threat that the whole deal depended on his provision of the extension and I would withdraw all investment on his refusal.

"Thinking that finally everything would be sorted I returned again to the office on Friday afternoon to collect my permit. The officer I’d spoken to in the morning who had assured me that all the problems were now addressed had disappeared without telling anyone where he was going and leaving no clue as to where the file now was. This time the clerk who succumbed to my haunting ploy was not even in the department but had come to chat to her friend – who happened to be the boss of the investigation officer I had spoken to that morning and, I believe, made her friend feel a little guilty about my plight for eventually she reluctantly went through the papers on the officers desk and found the file with his notes.

"I left the office at three-thirty, a full hour earlier than I had anticipated with my permit in hand and only the complication of having to run out to a local shop to photocopy it as the Immigration Department in Lusaka has no photocopier of their own.

And I wonder where the time goes . . ."

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