To Cross or not to Cross
- Details
- Written July 2020
My first experience was on a 1962 medical student visit to see a SA hospital. We crossed Kipling’s Great Grey-Green Greasy Limpopo into Rhodesia. It didn’t look quite that great, I thought. But the Zambezi at Victoria Falls did as we travelled north to Chikankata. Little did I think we’d be back there six years later. But a few more borders before then.
In January 1964 I spent a month at a Church of Scotland Hospital in what was then in one of South Africa’s regions, Transkei, recognised as a separate country with a border by few except South Africa itself. I had to stop at the Kei River, a boundary of earlier years, and scene of a number of skirmishes between the local Xhosa and the British establishing an empire. I had to report to the local government offices in Umtata, but all went well. The farce of this geographical set-up changed with the birth of a democratic South Africa 30 years later.
A year later, in 1965, we were on honeymoon in the Drakensberg. Based at the foot of the Sani Pass, as we were, we had to take the hair-raising trip up an unmade road with multiple hairpin-bends and into Lesotho. We had our passports stamped to prove we’d been there.
Our 1967 trip through part of the Middle East gave us a taste of how unwelcome a South African passport could be in those days. A transit stop in Nairobi en route for Cairo (where we were welcomed with open arms) and we were told they’d put us on the next plane out, wherever it was going. They didn’t want us there. It was my first use of special pleading with ‘I beg you.’ It worked!
Lebanon, Syria and Jordan were fine. But leaving Jordanian East Jerusalem for Israel meant a separate passport, hidden during earlier visits, with a dummy air ticket from Amman, not Tel Aviv. A porter took us to the Mandelbaum Gate, and we carried our cases the hundred yards to the Israeli border post. During the visit to West Jerusalem we saw military installations in church towers. We wondered what was happening. A month later it was the six-day war.
Fifty years later I was back in East Jerusalem with a Palestinian as guide. We’d seen ‘the wall’ several hundred miles long as we drove through Israel. Now we could see the graffiti-slogans, the left-over shells of hand-grenades and heard stories of families allowed through gates in the wall each day to cultivate vineyards, olive groves and the like. A visit to Hebron followed a few days later. We could sense the tension. Palestinians resent the presence of Israeli settlers. It doesn’t take much for violence to erupt. We met two women, sponsored by the World Council of Churches, who monitor these border-gate crossings. They are committed to peace and reconciliation. A noble task.
The 1980s appointment as international medical adviser accentuated the limitations of world travel for me. That changed with the passport of the country that granted me citizenship. Thank you Queen Elizabeth.
These days refugees are increasingly in the headlines, with people risking everything in the quest for peace, freedom and a better life. It was my visit to south-east Asia in the early 80s that gave a glimpse into their lives. Visits took me to camps in southern Thailand with thousands of Cambodians awaiting an opportunity to settle in a third country. We crossed the border, through military fortifications topping a fifteen foot earth wall, and into Cambodia itself to assess the feasibility of TSA supporting returnees as part of a consortium, the Christian Medical Team. After this to a camp in north-eastern Thailand accommodating refugees who’d fled through Laos, doping their infants with opium during the day, and moving on at night before crossing the Mekong. This was a river that did merit the adjective ‘great’.
And then on to Hong Kong to see Salvation Army roles with refugees, some accommodated on the islands offshore, others housed in overcrowded containers. One of the clinics was in The Walled City, never officially part of Hong Kong itself. And then a short drive out to look across the border into China. Years later we crossed it for a day trip into mainland China! As I write, these are troubled days for the city.
We’ve stood on Canadian soil and gazed across the Niagara Falls to the ‘land of the free’. We’ve zig-zagged backwards and forwards across the Swiss-German border, with nobody to stop us near the Rhine Falls. We’ve visited Andre’s home just across the Geneva-France border, again with nobody to stop us. Will that change as border regulations tighten in today’s world?
We were invited to visit the ceremony that takes place every sunset on the Pakistan-India border at Wagha. We arrived in SA uniforms and once again it seems we were mistaken for high-ranking military brass. Front row seats and we were in touching distance of the turbaned Indian soldiers doing their high-stepping dance-like routine, stamping their feet at the Pakistanis before both sides slammed the gates closed for the night. National anthems, the flags lowered and we left. Our hosts pointed to the fence nearby. ‘I have cousins living in a village just across the border,’ he told us. ‘I’ve not seen them since 1947.’ They’d not given up hope of seeing them again one day. Meanwhile India and Pakistan glare across a border created by their colonial governors of an earlier generation.
One of my most enduring memories of a border dates back to the 70s when Zambia’s border with Rhodesia was closed. Flights south to South Africa were via Malawi. We could no longer use Chirundu, Kariba or Victoria Falls. There had to be a way round. Four countries meet at one point on the map - Zambia, Namibia’s Caprivi Strip, Botswana and Rhodesia. Kazangula is 50 miles upstream from the Victoria Falls. A ferry took us across the Zambezi into Botswana, then into Rhodesia. We made it back home - there and back the same way!
Thirteen years ago we returned to Zambia. It included a visit to the Victoria Falls. One of the objectives of the visit for the grandchildren was to collect a country emblem for their school mascot, the Brockham Bear. We were on the Zambian side; they also wanted one from Zimbabwe. We needed a passport to cross the bridge. The British, Swiss and American in the party needed a visa. South Africans got in without. Andre and I had both South African and British passports. We walked across the bridge and found what we were looking for -at a price, mind you. We had a cup of coffee and headed back.
It’s a strange old world. Things do change. Yes, I know there are many factors to consider, but am I allowed to dream of a world without borders?
July 2020.