Let me explain that I had not at any time requested to be issued a TP; all I wanted was a visa for one week to enable me to attend a conference, and the immigration people had all the documents on the conference. Furthermore, it was not my first time in Zambia so if the many forms travellers are compelled to fill at every airport means anything, they ought to have had information on me in their files. They would have discovered that I was not a terrorist, or maybe they discovered that I was not an "investor", of which more anon.
Zambia is a very beautiful country and boasts many world renowned sites including Victoria Falls. But unfortunately I have no desire to stay for three months or even a day beyond my original departure date.
Therefore, in this case, the Zambian authorities have simply ripped me off, even if the money did not come from my own pocket. Strictly speaking, the Zambian immigration authorities are within their rights to demand their pound of flesh, so to speak but even my Zambian friends think that I would have received more favourable treatment if I had been a citizen of say, a European country, the US, Canada or Japan. I believe it: about six years ago, I made a visa application for Zambia at its High Commission in Kensington in London.
I was in the company of four other people who were all British. None of my companions spent more than ten minutes before they received tickets that entitled them to pick up their visas the following morning. When my turn came, the Zambian official told me that it would take at least three weeks before I could receive my visa. This is not just a Zambian issue: African travellers face a lot of hassles when they try to get to Europe, US, Canada and almost everywhere on earth but you would think that travelling in Africa we would be less frazzled.
You would think wrong. We face as many problems travelling in Africa as we do in Europe or the US. After I was allowed on a TP into Lusaka, the conference organisers received information that the chap attending the same conference from Guinea had been detained in Johannesburg because the Zambian authorities had not submitted his name to the immigration officers in Johannesburg.
