"Sabotage" in Mozambique - April-June 2009
Part I: Great plans go awry
The Great Zambezi Expedition Plan
It was meant to be another Orgonise Africa expedition like many before… only bigger and better:
The Great Zambezi Expedition No 2.
In 2007, I had ‘gifted’ the Zambezi along the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe for about 600 km. Now we wanted to follow this great African river further; down to the sea, all the way through Mozambique – and even connect from the delta to Vilankulos, where my previous ocean-gifting acivities had reached so far. The previous Zambezi expedition had already produced wonderful results; namely increased rainfalls in Southern Zambia and Northern Zimbabwe. Together with the recent gifting of lake Malawi, we hoped to achieve a real breakthrough with this expedition. Water gifting on a large scale has the potential to energetically ‘liberate’ whole regions – and when I mean regions, I’m talking large parts of subcontinents like Southern Africa, not just a few counties in a small European country. I’m talking of thousands of ‘Towerbusters’ distributed over thousands of kilometres of waterways. The immediate visible effects are not as dramatic as the massive gifting of deathforce transmitters (misnamed ‘cellphone towers’ or ‘radar installations’). Nevertheless, they are profound and long lasting. Water is the main ingredient of life; a carrier of information. Increasing attention is paid by the worldwide alternative research community to water’s ability to store emotional information (see the well publicised work of Massuru Emoto or the recent DVD: Water – the Great Mystery, available at www.waterthemovie.co.za). The Zambezi is one of the truly great rivers of Africa, the third most important one after the Nile, and the Congo. The Zambezi region in Mozambique has seen much of the atrocious fighting of a decade long drawn out civil war and much subsequent suffering and trauma. What could be a more suitable feature to gift in order to uplift the energy of this country? The planned route by boat: Cahora Bassa, down the Zambezi and along the coast to Vilanculos. The satanic pentagram over Zimbabwe. A few months before our departure, Francie, one of the psychics that regularly participate in the chat on www.etheicwarriors.com, identified the above satanic pentagram as a figure installed by ritual black magic in order to hold Zimbabwe down energetically. Two of the end points of this slightly distorted pentagram were within reach of our expedition, and we were happy to include them in our target list. One was near the small settlement Mecossa on the way from the Gorongosa National Park to Tete, the other near the Luangwa confluence with the Zambezi; the Western boundary of Lake Cahora Bassa.
Getting Ready
The preparations for this trip were thorough and expensive. I bought a new boat with two engines in very good condition and a lot of new safari equipment. I had custom-made fuel tanks manufactured for the boat, in order to be able to store a maximum amount of fuel for the long trips we were to make between possible refuelling points. The longest I figured would be from Marromeu on the Zambezi to Beira; approximately 340 km. There were many uncertainties to contend with and not a lot of information available. This part of the world is not a tourist area…
Obstacles Mounting
Getting there was hard. The unspeakably bad roads of Mozambique were shredding the boat trailer to pieces – we lost a wheel after Vilanculos and were delayed for many hours, driving back to source new wheel bearings. Luckily, the axle was undamaged. This happened many more times before we reached the Cahora Bassa Dam. When we reached the Dam after 5 days of travelling, we were proud of the obstacles we had overcome so far, but also aware that there was marked resistance to the success of the trip. Was this black magic etheric resistance or just bad luck; an oversight in my preparation? After a day of preparing the boat we took it out for a first test drive, which went well. We were quite happy with its performance, so we prepared for the great day of the big trip to Zumbo, on the other end of the lake, and back. Driving up and down to Songo to get more petrol, packing camping stuff and Orgonite on the boat filled the rest of the day. We felt we were ready and set our alarm for early next morning in order to be moving by first sunlight. The boat was in the water by 6am, but we found that it was totally overloaded and, with that weight, we could not get it up to speed – instead of about 40 km/h we were only moving at 10-12. We had to decide quickly. The solution, not easy but necessary, was that only Tino and I would do this trip and the others would remain at the camp. We also reduced the camping gear and food supply. Finally, Tino and I were up-and-running, and in a good mood… the weather was great, almost no wind, and the water very calm. When we reached the large open water after about 40 km, one of the engines started to behave strangely, gradually losing power. We stopped to take a look. It took us hours to take the carburettor apart, clean and reassemble it, but there was no marked improvement. In fact, the engine would not start again at all. Finally, we puttered back using one engine, at a speed of just 10km/h. Our comrades looked on with big, dissapointed eyes to see us back so early and without having accomplished much. At least we had laid out a string of TBs over the 40 km we had travelled; dropping one into the river approximately every 1000m. The next day was spent further dismantling that fateful engine with the help of Gary and Steven, two friendly people who were working nearby. We ended the day thinking that there was something wrong with the ignition coils.
Forcing it: The Fateful Trip on the Pontoon Ferry
I guess this should have been the point of going home after so many warning signs and obstacles; just a few too many to be ignored. I would not accept defeat, as it would not only mean breaking-up the expedition, but also writing-off so much time and money that we had invested. When would I next be able to repeat this and get this far? When would I be able to again gather a team of four? Since we had mastered the previous obstacles quite well, I was willing to push the envelope. src="/images/pic 081205CahoraBassa.jpg" alt="orgonite gifting cahora bassa" Lake Cahora Bassa – The distance from the dam wall at Songo to Zumbo is about 240km.
The Cahora Bassa Dam wall – a national monument
While we were quite depressed about the problem with the boat, (was it sabotage?), we heard that a weekly pontoon ferry was making the trip to Zumbo, and so we decided to use that for gifting the lake. The plan was born that Carlos, Tino and Prophet would do the trip on the ferry, while I would stay behind and push for the boat to get fixed in the meantime. If I could get the boat back in shape, we would at least salvage the objective of gifting lake Cahora Bassa and accomplish the greater part, or all of, the original mission. The ferry was a pathetic contraption – basically, a rusty platform atop of welded-together oil drums with a shaggy-looking corrugated iron roof on top. It was driven by the type old diesel engine used for a water pump, with a moving speed of about 10-11 km/h tops. The trip to Zumbo by ferry would take three days, and another three on top of that if my friends could not find an alternative way of returning.
So the morning they left on the ferry (Wednesday 15th April), I got myself busy with the boat engine immediately. Luis, the resident mechanic of the fishing lodge where we stayed, had already stripped the engine and we soon found that the pistons were burnt and the piston rings had seized. How was that possible on an almost brand-new engine? The other engine was fed from the same petrol supply through a water filter and had brought us home safely, so it could not have been an omission to put 2-stroke oil into one of the petrol tanks. It would have inevitably killed both engines. I cannot exclude the possibility of sabotage. Trying to find spare parts was a nightmare – it turned out that these engines were so new that the dealers did not stock spare pistons, as nobody expected anything to go wrong with them. Luis, an experienced ‘bush mechanic’ and a really nice guy, too, had a friend who could weld aluminium, so we tried to fill the holes in the pistons with welding material and then filed them down to the correct shape. This wasn’t 100% successful, but it looked promising. In the meantime, I had made 2 new friends – Neil and Caroline – who were operating a fishing rig with cooling room on lake Cahora Bassa. They offered to lend me an engine for the rest of trip, and we brought it to the lodge ready to fit to my boat the next day. I noticed a group of soldiers lingering around the parking lot. Undeterred, I decided to invite Neil, Caroline and Gary to have dinner at Songo town as a ‘thank you’ for their generous help. We all went back to the lodge to dress up a little for the evening. On the road to Songo, we were suddenly stopped by a group of soldiers and plain-clothed police. They gesticulated wildly while wielding their AK47 rifles in a menacing way, shouting, “Back to lodge, back to lodge!” It soon turned out that they were only interested in me and not in my companions. I already knew then that this was related to our gifting activity in some way, but tried to stay calm and collected.
Dammned!
The soldiers and policemen followed us to the lodge, where we parked the car and went to the restaurant/bar. We were asked to wait there for further instructions. My new friends asked if I had done anything wrong, so I set out to explain what I was doing with the Orgonite (I had been a bit discreet about the mission before) and that we had previously experienced similar problems in Zimbabwe. Nick, the manager of the Ugezi Tiger lodge had seen the Orgonite before and knew that it was harmless. The police conveyed to Nick via one of the Portuguese-speaking employees that I was not allowed to move the car or leave the lodge. Senior police officers would arrive the next day to talk to me. The following day, around seven important-looking people arrived in a convoy of vehicles. Among them was a ‘Commander Jorge’, the police commander of the Cahora Bassa area, and two guys who introduced themselves as belonging to ‘counterintelligence’. I knew then that I was in trouble. They told me that my friends had been observed throwing things into the lake from the ferry and asked if I could say anything about that. I proceeded to show them a few Towerbusters, explaining what they were and why we threw them into the lake. After a while of looking at the TBs they became a bit friendlier, but in a way not really to be trusted. They finally departed, saying I should inform them when my friends were back from the ferry trip, as they wanted to talk to them as well. Is it worth mentioning that I bought a bottle of wine and paid for a few other drinks for the officers in a futile attempt to ingratiate myself and dispel the menacing atmosphere? It later became clear that this had been orchestrated much higher up – there was never an opening to bribe or charm our way out of it. This had been set-up to punish and frighten us from deep inside the security jungle, and Commander Jorge and his men were only pawns in the game.
Busted!
When Tino, Prophet and Carlos came back from their arduous tour-de-force, exhausted, tired and dirty, they hardly found the time change their dirty clothes or take a shower, let alone sit down and relax, when a whole convoy of police, soldiers, and security people already arrived at the lodge. They had obviously been monitored all the way. After a short and still civil talk around the table, we were asked in a firm but still polite way to settle our bills at the lodge and pack up our car and follow them to the police station. The packing was supervised by armed police and military. At the police station we were asked into the Commander’s office for an interview. All this was still polite and based on our voluntary cooperation. No warrant of arrest was ever produced. We repeated our truthful explanation of the purpose of our trip and the nature of the Orgonite. I also asked them to check out my website www.orgoniseafrica.com for confirmation that this activity was on public record and told them about my book Operation Paradise. I did not have the feeling they were too interested… somehow their minds were already ‘set’ in a different way, and, at the end of the interview, we were escorted to the neighbouring prison – a converted garage. Significantly, Commander Jorge advised the officer who escorted us, “No beating, no torture”. I guess that means it has to be said in order for these things not to take place. The scene enfolding in the dim light was weird to say the least. The open space of the garage was populated by prisoners mostly lingering around an open cooking fire, all eyes directed at us. We were of course anxious and afraid of what was waiting for us...
Part II: In the slammer!
Sabotage, espionage, terrorism: accused of unspeakable crimes
Monday 20 April
We soon realised that our situation was much more serious than we first thought. Somehow police interrogators all over the world are quite smart in getting their victim's cooperation by giving them this feeling of “come on, we're just going to ask you a few questions and if everything is as you say, you'll be free in no time” so you come along without too much fuss and are much easier to handle for them. So we had thought this prison was just a temporary holding cell and we would be out of there in no time. They even let us go in there with our cellphones and other belongings, insinuating there was no problem keeping the stuff. It was not like this of course and the first thing was that all our private belongings were taken from us and checked into a steel cupboard at the prison office. As is to be expected, we were quite apprehensive at first and rather cuddled in one corner of the large hall where other prisoners were gathered around an open fire. The structure was obviously an old disused car workshop of sorts. It had an airy roof on steel trusses that allowed for a strip of sky to be seen and provided good ventilation. The old offices on the left side were used as the actual cells. 5 of them as far as I remember, each about 3 x 4 m where 17-21 prisoners had to sleep on the naked concrete floor.
Tuesday 21 April
we were called out to attend a complete search of our car under heavy armed guard in the presence of police, customs officials and secret service offices. Many insinuating and leading questions were asked and the general atmosphere was quite aggressive. Especially the customs official took on a very threatening and unpleasant pose. Nick, the Manager of Ugezi Tiger Lodge where we had camped came to see us in the evening. He said it was very difficult for him to see us and that he had to try 3 times or more in order to finally be granted a visit. He said he would not be able to visit us again. We asked him urgently to help find a lawyer for us. The same message was put out to a bystanding business man who watched the scene of our car search and with whom I was able to exchange a few words.
Wednesday 22 April
Our case officer Senor White (a black Mozambican, but somehow he or his family had aquired this English surname) took us to court, after we had pestered him with fancy legalities for a while about not holding us illegally without charging us formally. But no paper was produced and nothing was explained to us. We went back without result. White obviously wanted it to look like some kind of legalisation of our imprisonment, but it wasn't. At this time we were told to expect a few days until they would have conducted some tests and then of course, if everything was as we said.... Same old tactics. We were not heavily guarded, basically walking to the court with Sr. White and could have easily run away if this had seemed a viable option to us. Convinced of my innocence I wasn't ready to risk all my confiscated property and my life in an adventurous escape. (How nice it would have been for them to hunt us and shoot us while trying to escape, no more questions asked) Maybe they did this on purpose to entice us to do just that. Otherwise I could not explain the strange contrast between the severity of the allegations and the sloppyness of our guard.
Thursday 23 April
After a rather featureless day, only interrupted by counting appeals (chamada) and eating, we were finally visited by Dr. Nhantumbo, who was the lawyer somehow alerted to our need either by Nick or that anonymous business man. We will never know for sure, how word got to him. If you think in terms of what you know about criminal procedures mostly from American movies, you may believe that detainees have “a right to their phone call” or some such niceties. This doesn't seem to be common practice in Africa. (See my similar experience in Zimbabwe in 2006, www.orgoniseafrica.com/prisoners.html) Things happen via the grape vine or actually you depend on the goodwill (to be achieved through bribing) of your carcer masters. A rather good looking and well dressed tall black man with an energetic and youthful demanour, Dr. Nhantumbo immediately became our ray of hope and focus of all the sympathy and trust we could muster. In other words: We loved him to bits from day one! He came in with his wife who doubles up as his secretary. They were allowed to use the desk in the little office of the prison to interview us. After taking statements of our version of events they were quite shocked I think. After all, they had been told that we were terrorism suspects by the police whom they had seen first to get aquainted with the case. Herminio, as we should call him for most of the time suggested a fee of 750 USD per person for the four of us to which we agreed. We felt quite invigorated after the interviw and were even able to pass on a zapper that we still had in our”handluggage” and a piece of orgonite to him. We were under the impression that our feelings of sympathy were mutual and that Nhantumbo genuinlely sypmathised with our case, which gave us great hope. He was independently pointed out to us as the best lawyer in Tete Province by other prisoners. (prisoners tend to know a lot about who is who in the legal system they're dealing with)
Friday 24 April
This time it was for real: We were taken to court in order to have our incarceration "legalised". Now in the presence of our new found lawyer, we made our statements. We were confronted with all kinds of printouts from our cameras, with a focus on cellphone masts and other objects of “national importance”. The drift was obviously to concoct a kind of sabotage story. Also they confronted us with a “test” conducted in laboratories of HCB (Hidroelectrica de Cahora Bassa) the operating company of the dam. This test was of more than dubios nature and extremely manipulative in it's conclusions. But it was accepted by magistrate judge Dr. Domingo Samuel as enough reason to hold us pending further investigation, despite the fact that he had to already admit irregularities in the procedural handling of our arrest and detention. While they admitted that the orgonite did not dissolve in water, they subjected it to all kinds of very aggressive substances such as fluoric acid etc., then to observe that the dissolved orgonite after such treatment was forming a rather toxic slurry (no mention here that the lake is not made of highly concentrated acids, but of pristine and clear water) which might then be potentially corrosive to the turbines of the dam etc.. also it was noted that water into which one of our orgonite Tbs had been inserted showed a pH value of 2.4 which is acidic. This was portrayed as potentially damaging to aquatic life forms. Again minimum scientific requirements were not met, as no critical evaluation of quantities took place. After all the dam has 53 cubic kilometres of water. Did they immerse the TB into a glass of water or a bath tub? What was the pH of that water before they immersed the TB? None of this was mentioned yet the most adventurous conclusions were drawn from the funny and layman-like “experiments” that they had done. Enough fig leaf for them to toss us back into the slammer. It was clear then, that someone was hellbound to have us go through this ordeal without any reference to truth or simple common sense. This “test”was outrageous and the judge knew it as he privately admitted to Nhantumbo, but they went ahead never the less. At this point we had the impression that the satanic coven seeking our punishment was hiding within the structures of HCB. This suspicion was fuelled by the fact that Nick had told me before our full scale arrest that the environmental director of the local HCB management crew was particularly angry or rather more than just angry with what we had done. The amount of anger thrown at us and the kind of sustained energy behind the “investigation” began to puzzle us as it is so untypical of Mozambicans who are normally rather laid back with a clear tendency towards “lazyness”. But this....? Had we succesfully disabled some unacknowledged secret underground base? Alien hive? I tend to think so because the buzzing angry energy they threw at us had all characteristics of a disturbed hornets nest. That same day and typically without presence of our lawyer we were subjected to further intimidation in what can only be called an attempted shake down. Carlos and I were called out and handcuffed. Tino was also handcuffed and locked away in one of the cells while Prophet was locked into another cell without hand cuffs. We were led first through the police station, always in handcuffs and under heavy armed guard. The demeanour of the soldiers and policemen was very threatening and we were now really afraid. This looked to me like they were about to bring us to a place of torture, some cellar where they can beat you up and nobody hears the cries. All African police forces do that if they deem it fit and probably in Western countries as well. But somehow the whole thing ended in confusion. A vehicle that they had ordered, arrived late (typical Mozambique) and once they had crammed us inside, suddenly they changed their mind and brought us back to the prison. Apparently they had wanted us to point out to them where we had put orgonite in Songo and surrounds, but we told them that was difficult as we would not remember the concrete spots and GPS logs were inconsistent and not very accurate. After all we did not want to give them more incriminating evidence and were quite happy with the fact that they had no material proof that we had tossed anything anywhere at all, apart from our open and forthcoming “confessions”. Now they went for Prophet and we started fearing for him, thinking they might see him as the most vulnerable of us 4 and try their ugly trade on him. After about an hour, when it was already dark, Prophet came back unharmed, alas! He told us they had driven with him to the office of HCB and left him waiting in the car under guard for most of the time. After that they had come out with some of the HCB people laughing and he was then driven back to the prison. They had apparently been watching the movie footage from my little film camera and now thought they “had us” because it shows us tossing stuff, sometimes near cellphone masts. A big fuss was made about our electronic equipment even in court where they made it look like these freely available consumer electronic items like GPS, cameras etcetera where the latest from Mr. Q in a James Bond Movie. We were now more than ever convinced that this “investigation” was driven by HCB and not the police itself. Definitely none of the printouts and sophisticated analyses of contact networks based on our cellphone data that they had shown us in court was within the technical and even intellectual capabilities of the local police. HCB runs the show in Songo, that's for sure, as the whole town was only built to accommodate the builders and engineers who built the dam and also now HCB is the only game in town economically. Apparently they have their own security organisation and probaly a bit of an intelligence network too. After all, Cahora Bassa is considered probably the most important single structure or building of superior economic importance in Mozambique. It can be considered a national monument and a lot of the anger that was purposefully directed at us was fuelled by feelings of hurt national pride or feelings that we had violated their souvereignty. These feeling are deeply rooted in a history of decades of civil war funneled by an inextricable melé of foreign interference including of course mercenary commandos who would blow up bridges, lay land mines and other such gruesome activities. How easy for someone who wanted to deter us from further gifting in Africa to trigger all these traumatic memories in a country where people still get maimed by leftover land mines every week or so?
Saturday 25 – Monday 27 April
We wrote a detailed statement, refuting all accusations that we have become aware of so far. First we formulate it in English and then Carlos translated it into Portuguese. We wanted Nhantumbo to be well armed. No action by the “authorities”.
Tuesday 28 April
They had brought in high ranking prosecutors and criminal investigators from the capital Maputo in the meantime. Obviously there was a sentiment in Maputo that “the local boys could not handle it”. We were brought to a different building in town, the local prosecution office. After a while a cavalcade of relatively shiny 4x4s arrived and a few gentlemen who seemed very convinced of their own great importance alighted from those vehicles and entered the building. Nhantumbo was also there. I was called in first. The chief prosecutor from Maputo, the highest ranking one in that delegation did not partake in the interrogation. The actual interview was conducted by a prosecutor and a police criminal investigator from Maputo. I do not recall their names even though they did introduce themselves. But we did never receive a copy of the written record of this interview. The often leading and insinnuating questions were very much geared towards the complex of “espionage, sabotage, terrorism”. Not a surprise, as obviously whoever started this made sure it stayed on this level. They had to of course deliberately ignore a lot of information in order to prevent common sense from entering the picture. I wonder if any of these guys ever took a look at my website www.orgoniseafrica.com. I gave the address to the police at the first interview. We were under the impression that this information and our previous statements to the magistrate were deliberately supressed in order to keep all the players in this mind frame as if they were involved in a “big fish” terrorism case. Despite all these adverse factors, I believe our statements made an impression. We were calm, friendly and cooperative but not submissive. Later heard through the grapevine that the prosecutors found me arrogant, probably that's the part that I call “polite but not submissive”. We did not deny any of the material facts and generally told the truth about our expedition, what we had done so far and what we had planned to do. I also told tehm freely about my previous expeditions of similar nature. This is public knowledge anyways, so why not talk about it. Carlos went in second and that was all that fitted in one day.
Wednesday 29 April
The interviews - or rather interrogations - continued with Tino and Prophet. Nhantumbo had meanwhile managed to find some Portuguese websites talking about orgonite and submitted the printouts to the prosecution. Obviously a good move to show that we were not the only website talking about it and that it had entered the Portuguese speaking world independent of our little troupe. After the interviews were finished we all had a good feeling and somewhat expected the charges to be dropped immediately or at least next day. This feeling was especially fuelled by what we learned informally and totally “off the record”: 1.Apparently another test had been conducted in Maputo and found the orgonite sample free of any dangerous substances. 2.The guys at HCB had finally looked at our website and now knew that we were innocent of Sabotage, espionage or whatever was the charge against us. We had seen the prosecutors speak very animatedly with Nhantumbo and congratulate him on his good work. So we really expected it all to be over very quickly now. In the meantime I had developed a painfully swollen leg, probably started by a small wound I had contracted stumbling over a high step in the prison at night on the way to the toilet.
Thursday 30 April
A decision on our fate is indeed promised and our hopes are high but no news transpires. Prison routine. I develop fever from the infected leg. We have no more zapper at this stage.
Friday 01 May
Today we are not let out into the open hall. After the morning appeal the whole prison is locked back in the hot and stuffy cells. We later found out that the guards who knew we had money were basically displeased because we had not paid them a goodwill bribe yet. That was the reason why the whole prison was made to suffer. Welcome to the Mozambican “justice” system! We corrected that of course, by paying them. It was a bit difficult to do that with a dignified face.
Saturday 02 May
Corruption is an important part if not the most important part of the interactions between wardens and prisoners in Mozambique. As we were to learn, everything can be bought: drugs, prostitutes, food, privileges of all sorts. Of course there is always a limit where the warden would compromise his position and continued employment. He does not compromise that normally or the bribes wióuld have to be extremely high. We used the system to gain access to telephone calls by buying wardens airtime in return for which they allowed us to send SMSes home and ask our home team (mostly Friederike was the one who kept the others informed and talked to me frequently) to call us back. In this way we had frequent communication with home while in Songo. This was to change later when we were transferred to the provincial capital Tete, but for now we were able to speak to home almost daily. We were also able to speak to Nhantumbo who told us he was in Maputo to “cut the bullshit at the top”. Obviously he was trying to utilise all his contacts to prevent the “Authorities” in Maputo from falsifying or further delaying the test on which our freedom depended.
Just a little anecdote by the side:
when I first entered the prison I was shocked by the grotto-like filth that was called the bathroom in this place. There were 2 squatting toilets of broken porcelaine with permanently running water. Everything around these toiltes was quite filthy and one would not want to come in touch with any of these surfaces for sure. In the same compartment there were 2 pipes sticking out of the wall with equally permanenetly runing water. Nobody has ever installed a water meter there apparently and so they kept water running happily the whole day also in the big hall through an open channel that traversed the whole length of the hall. One could get into this shower by balancing over a few slippery stones which gave the whole setup it's cave like appearance. Very basic conditions! I only realised after a while that these horrible ablution facilities were obviously considered a blessing by the wardens who regularly took showers there, obviously not having running water at home. The normal wardens earn no more than 100 US Dollar worth of Mozambican Meticais per month. No wonder they are so keen to augment their meager salaries.
Sunday 3 May
No news nor action from the state side. We wither away in relative boredom.
Some general observations:
Theoretically prisoners in Mozambique have similar rights to prisoners in more developed countries. The wardens gave us a brochure called “Os direitos do detidos” or “the rights of detainees” among which we found familiar ideas like: - The right to legal representation. In case a detainee cannot afford a private lawyer this would even include a state lawyer. - The right to nutritious and healthy food - The right to physical exercise - The right to proper medical care - Freedom from wanton corporal punishment or other abuse Interestingly that little brochure needed the sponsorship of at least 11 or 12 foreign embassies in order to get published, symptomatic for the donor dependant mentality in this country. The prison food alone is not nutricious enough to maintain even minimum health. It consists of rice, maize meal and brown beans, nothing else ever, two times a day. That's it, day in day out for years to come if one is sentenced. Without supplementation from what relatives may bring their detained kin or what prisoners are allowed to buy outside through privileged prisonmers who are allowed to go out, this must definitely lead to disease and death. Subsequently we found that many of the long term sentenced prisoners looked quite emaciated, pretty much like what you normally get shown as “AIDS” victims. AIDS in Africa of course is basically malnutrition + vaccine and medication induced damage to the immune system, so the prison diet just accelerates a trend that affects poor Africans inside and outside the walls of prisons alike. Some prisoners get beaten every day and a large group of the sentenced prisoners are allowed to leave their stuffy overcrowded cells only for the counting appeals. Surely no organised effort to allow for healthy exercise is undertaken. State lawyers are an unheard of luxury and those who can affort the exorbitantly expensive private lawyers find that their communication with those lawyers is being obstructed at any level. Nor do the police have a culture of respecting the rights of lawyers or the relative sanctity of lawyer-client privacy. We were officially not even allowed to phone Nhantumbo nor was he automatically called to be present in ad-hoc interrogations. Medical care was basically the dishing out of pills to those who had been declared sick. A nurse from the hospital came from time to time to administer pills. I had received antibiotics for my infected leg only from Nhantumbo. Afte a while the guards started giving us disinfectant and penicillin powder, the only chance to control the festering sores under the generally dirty conditions. A doctor only came to see me much later after a general attitude change was ordained from above, not in the normal course of events. Hygiene is difficult to maintain under these crowded conditions. Nevertheless we observed that the prisoners are trying to keep themselves clean and washing of clothes, taking showers and so on takes up a lot of time in the prisoner's life every day. Ingenious systems have been devised by prisoners. Personal belongings hang on strings from hooks under the roof, so that foods or other belongings are safe from rats and mice. Since the prison cells are not opened at night, prisoners have invented a smart system to urinate into a cut plastic bottle which is inserted into a tiny hole in the floor near the door that is basically a small pipe connection to the ditch outside with the permanently running water. You have to learn to use it though and a bit of urine is allways spillt.
Our every day prison life in Songo
We managed to do quite a bit of exercise while in Songo prison. I did about 20-30 minutes of Yoga exercises and Tino and Prophet did a round of Tai Chi every morning. Carlos did not participate in any physical exercises but did a lot of meditative grounding work while standing upright with closed eyes. All this attracted quite a bit of curiosity of course. We decided not to care though for “public perception” for what was there to lose if they thought us a bit weird? Prophet even did one of his poetry recitations which always include singing and powerful recitations of spoken words which caused quite a stir. At that time we still hadn't finished all our books, so reading helped to fill some of the slowly passing time. Since they had confiscated about 6000 Mts in cash from us, we could access that money for the buying of food (and other usefull expenses) For breakfeast we mostly had bananas, freshly baked Portuguese style bread rolls and some very chemical jam and margerine. To augment the maize-pap (they call it Nshima in Mozambique) we got tinned sardines and also we were able to get our dry food box from the car with some camping pots to use over the communal cooking fire. We got along well with the other prisoners who were not particularly violent or threatening. On the contrary, we heard many heart breaking stories of crude injustice that had brought many of them to prison. Of course not everybody there is “innocent” (whatever that means in a sick society like Mozambique, where lies and deception and cruel oppression of the majority by a greedy and totally corrupt “elite” is the normal modus operandi) but many sit months and years for petty crimes like stealing an egg, while those who put them there are happily stealing millions without any sanction whatsoever. A weird system. Simple people without money basically get convicted as accused. If the boss says they have stolen they get sentenced accordingly. Finished and klaar. No investigation, no witnesses apart from the accuser needed. This is probably still like under the Portuguese slave masters. Tete was a major base of the unofficial but thriving Portuguese slave trade up until mid or late nineteenth century when it was still witnessed and described by David Livingstone. Of course you get your career criminals and gangster kingpins who even still at prison brazenly enjoy the privileges and relative power their illgotten gains can still buy them behind prison walls. Apart from reading and exercise we soon had another distraction: we had made a makeshift game of Chess out of an A4 paper and even the pieces were drawn with ball pen on paper and carefully torn from the bigger page. So we played chess a lot. Prophet actually learnt it in prison and got quite good at it over the weeks. We watched the strip of sky that we could see between the surrounding walls and the roof a lot. We found lovely cumulus and a lot of humidity in the air. Unusual for the time of the year, approaching the dry winter period where the sky is normally steel blue without clouds. We also noticed the sweet, energised taste of the water that was flowing so freely through our involuntary home. That water was pumped directly from Cahora Bassa and you could feel the lovely orgone created by our many orgonite gifts. Surely it did not smell or taste “contaminated” in any way. Despite our outwardly unpleasant situation, I remember the overarching feeling as peaceful and happy, as unbelievable as this may sound. We had many good conversations and especially Tino proved to have great entertaining talent with his word-by-word true renditions of many movies from “For a fistful dollars” to “Blackadder goes forth” and Louis Farakhans blood curling speech “The shock of the hour”. So we did have a bit of fun once in a while, mixed of course with anxiety about how our strange situation would further develop. In the meantime our home team did not sleep There was lots of talk of accessing high ranking politicians in Botswana and South Africa. After all Tino has been a very respected pilot in the Botswana Airforce and was offered a high profile job directly by the president of Botswana in a one hour personal interview just before our trip. We could expect some support from that corner and should later also learn that it had been forthcoming albeit with no immediate effect.
Monday 4 May
Spoke to Nhantumbo. He's still in in Maputo. Said he had not seen the test results but that “everything is under control”.
Tuesday 5 May
we're getting restless, waiting for news. In the very late afternoon in already fading light we were suddenly called out, handcuffed and brought to the yard of the police station. Wondering what this was about and fearing another shake-down style aggressive interrogation we were pleasantly surprised to see TV cameras and a bunch of cilvilians who turned out to be newspaper reporters gathered there. In fact Nhantumbo had mentioned earlier that he would “bring in the media” if the case wasn't resolved soon. Had he arranged for this? It turned out that the TV host from Mozambique's national TV was definitely a friend of Nhantumbo's and in fact we were able to speak to Nhanmtumbo through the TV guy's phone. Carlos gave a lengthy in depth interview which went quite well. All of us were asked a few questions and the TV producer asked the camera man to zoom in on my swollen leg which looked quite awful by then.
Wednesday 6 May
Things now seemed to turn in our favour finally. We're picking up from what other prisoners tell us that favourable voices were increasing out there in radio and newspapers. Also suddenly a doctor from the hospital came to see me about my leg and even though she only looked at it from a distance then to prescribe another antibiotic it was a sign of changed attitude. The doctor even told the prison wardens that I had to ly with the leg raised and someone fetched a bench and everybody was suddenly fussing about me. Prophet gave a radio interview. It seemed the media were now catching on to the story big time. In the evening I was called out into the commander's office. 2 gentleman, one of whom was introduced as a provincial government official were with commander Jorge. The other one spoke German fluently and told me he'd studied in Munich. Everyone was suddenly extremely friendly.I was offered bisquits and Coca Cola and they apologised for the inconveneniences we were having to endure. They said it was only going to be another test and a few more days and then we would be surely free. Interesting. The hot - cold treatment or what? I told them they must talk to Tino as well who has flown so many support missions for the Mozambican army while still a pilot in the Botswana airforce. By then we did not know yet that our story had made international news headlines from BBC to Portuguese national TV and all the major South African Newspapers and some national radio stations. A friend of mine even heard about our fate on the radio in Berlin.
Thursday 7 May
We still haven't seen Nhantumbo in person for 8 days or so. We officially demand the right to phone our lawyer in writing and the guards confirm delivery to commander Jorge. No reaction. Instead Senor White comes in and demands that all our goodies that are still held in the steel cupboard are turned over to the police station. We are made to sign a new amended list for the confiscated goods. We wrongly think this is some kind of petty retaliation for our audacious demands. We would discover the next day that the concentration of our goods in one hand was the preparation for transferring us to Tete, the provincial capital. The battle in the press had begun, to a much larger extent than we could fathom from our isolated position in prison and it seemed to swing in our favour. Now finally we really felt reason for optimism. Suddenly we heard the president saying in the radio that nobody should jump to conclusions about our guilt or innocence. Then the Prime Minister came on and said she believed we were innocent.
Friday 8 May
No wonder we thought it was going to be our release when we were told to pack our things in the morning and be ready to be transported to Tete. With all the build up of the last 48 hours we thought they had scheduled our release to be done in Tete. The wardens and even the quicksilvery “commander Jorge” all let us feel that they expected us to be set free in Tete. People in the prison system tend to get a bit sentimental when a prisoner gets released. The may say things like “we hope you'll keep us in good memory” and so on... It is also known that terrorist hostage takers have a desire to be liked by their victims. Same here. Of course the usual delays made the waiting long. Finally we were packed in the back of my own Landrover handcuffed to some other prisoners while most of our belongings were haphazardly thrown onto the back of a pickup truck that had to accommodate more handcuffed prisoners. The boat was hooked onto the Landrover and armed guards squezed into the Landrover and the pickup trick. Little did we know what was to await us in Tete, so clearly was our mind set on freedom...
Part III - staring down the beast
The hole is deeper than we thought
Shattered hopes
Instead of TV cameras and officials with smiling faces, happy to end this embarrassing episode, we found ourself in an unspeakable holding cell under the broad formal staircase of the High Court and Provincial State Prosecution Building in Tete. That after having waited in a hallway in front of the prosecutor's office for 2 hours for some paper work to be processed. Only briefly did we get to see Nhantumbo before being locked away and he told us we would go to the "Civil Prison" in Tete (Cadeia Civil) and he was still optimistic, saying "This is your way out!"
Little did we know..
Oh my God. about 20 people on 20 m2, one of them with a fresh untreated gunshot wound to his knee, wimpering in pain. No toilet. The prisoners had designated an area for that. Oh the stink! It was really hard to breathe. After hours under these painful conditions where some prisoners were called out and the heavy steel door slammed shut again, we were led out as well. We were brought to a truck where the load area was converted to a steel cage with primitive benches. It was driven by a prisoner. We later got to know him better. Paulo was the first guy that really looked like a hard core criminal, tatoos all over and all the bells and whistles. We did not feel to good at this stage. The diary that I kept in these ensuing days has been lost, so I will rather report on these days in Tete as it comes to mind.
Caravan-Serai bizarre
A pity that we could not take photos. Now I have to try and recreate the bizarre scenery that awaited us at "La Cadeia Civil do Tete". On the outside a quite nice looking white washed building with a large double winged wooden gate, inside the prison was a dirty square yard surrounded by cell buildings. Surrounded by 6 meter high walls the square looked vaguely like a market place in some Suaheli town in Tanzania. Densely populated by about 800 prisoners, the place looked like some market place, only with no goods to sell. There was a raised podium with a corrugated iron roof that looked like people could sell fish or meat there, but it was referred to as "the church". While most of the square was just plain dusty trampled and eroded soil with remnants of erstwile paving still visible to the "archeologically trained eye", the wardens had managed to fence in a little square of green grass where 3 trees including a palm tree were projecting a somewhat tropical image. This was in front of the admin block and strictly guarded. Nobody was allowed to trample on the grass.
A "Hotel Tropicana" with limited leisure options...
After we had already somewhat accommodated ourself to the prison in Songo with its much smaller population, this was of course first frightening. The mass of prisoners alone. We were cowering in a corner under armed guard and were here finally stripped of our remaining personal belongings. The last orgone pendants and zappers that had still managed to keep in songe were taken away. Bad luck as our health was slowly going down of course. Just after we had been delivered to the prison, the Mozambican TV team that had already interviewed us in Songo arrrived. Our incarceration was restaged for the camera again. That's how news is made, in case you didn'r know. After being processed in this way (they wanted to shave off Prophet's formidable dread locks, an idea they only gave up after an intervention of Nhantumbo) we were introduced to our cell bosses. (chefe do cela) This was a pleasant surprise. They had quite an organised system in this pison. Apart from the "chefe do cela", with general responsibility for the cell, there was a "chefe do segurança", responsible for self policing of the inmates under his jurisdiction and a "chefe do higiene" who was responsible for keeping the cell, especially the ablutions, clean. The relation between prisoners and wardens was very differnt here than in Songo. Most of the time the 5 or 6 wardens on duty would sit on the small porch of the admin block, overlooking the prison yard. Rarely would they be found mingling with the prisoners. an economy of power and control. They were much more defensive, outnumbered as they were by the mass of prisoners and always carried guns. My cell boss, Aurelio Rato turned out to be a very decent man. He was a school teacher in Songo before he got thrown in this slammer, for beating up his girl friend under the influence of alcohol. Apart from this one time lapse with fatal consequences he had been a "valuable member of society" for most of his life, having - amongst other merits - founded and chaired a charity that looked after the sick and destitute. His subjects were art and mathematics and he was even in prison still teaching classes in these subjects. They had a programme of alphabetization going were prisoners with little education could at least learn basic literacy on grade 4 level. He still had 2 years to go but was adamant that he would try and continue his studies at university after getting out. Generally our relation to fellow inmates was quite good and after getting to know the main players of this weird society behind walls we never felt threatened by other prisoners. That despite the fact that due to our status as "terrorism suspects" we were crowded in with "Rape, Murder and Armed Robbery" suspects and convicted alike. Surely our fellow inmates were not all angels, but we never witnessed open violence of any sorts. The cell where Prophet and I were brought was about 5 x 7 metres (for nominally 92 prisoners!) and hat a small chamber of 3 x 1 metres that served as a "casa do bagno". Rests of tiling and old plumbing outlets showed that it must once have had something like modern sanitary installations. Maybe there once was a functioning toilet and certainly a wash hand basin. Not so any more. The toilet part was reduced to squatting over the end of the sewage pipe and trying to hit it without soiling the floor too much. Later the "chefe do higiene" had a low brick wall buit around that with a somewhat bowl shaped cement screed that made it easier. The flushing was done by bucket. Same for showering. Amazingly about 70% of the prisoners were keeping themselves very clean even under these conditions. The other 30% were the ones that had given themselves up. Those are the ones that die of "AIDS" or rather malnutrition and a lacking desire to live. The bathroom was always busy and this Muzungu (yours truly) needed to let all his relations play in order to book a slot for some private hygiene during the day. The overcrowding was enormous of course. These cells had been originally designated for maximum 15 prisoners. Of the 92 prisoners assigned to our cell, about 20 were allowed to sleep outside, either because they had the coveted "sick card" (tuberculosis was rife of course, we had 5 or 6 cases of open tuberculosis in our cell alone) or because they were somewhat trusted by the wardens, convicted long term prisoners who did not want to ruin their chances of early release by futile attempts at escape. Now, please, don't expect this to be anything like the prisons you know from American movies, ok? No beds, no blankets, no prison clothes. You just sleep on the floor with whatever you have. with 70-something inmates on 35 square metres that gives you half a square as your personal snoozing ground. Not much privacy there. Life on the slave ships must have been similar if you want to call that life. Only the slaves were kept in the dark as well and in their own excrement, so that half of them were normally dead on arrival. Here the death rate was a bit slower as we still got to see the sky every day, so we witnessed "only" about 4 or 5 prisoners passing away from malnutrition and disease during our stay. Private property was allowed in the cells and it was even possible to buy bamboo mats, some of which were manufactured by prisoners inside, some brought in from outside. Some prisoners even had thin foam matresses and blankets. After a while I was allowed to share a mattress with Daniel who later became "chefe do higiene". My customary sleeping place was close to the cell door but also close to the toilet (the smell!) Sometimes I felt a rat crawling over me at night and once I woke up at such an occasion and -still half asleep- tossed that nasty rodent into the heap of slumbering cell mates, crying or rather shrieking aloud "um rato - um rato!" I earned a lot of lasting mockery with that one. There were of course 1000s of the little buggers crawling all over the place always in search of some remnants of food. They were equally at home in the decrepit sewage system and surely not exactly purveyours of good health. People who received visitors from outside had private food of course, which they kept in bags, suspended from the floor. In fact without that extra food, one would have died from malnutrition in no time, as the prison only provided maize porrige (Nshima), rice and beans. Whatever other supplies were delivered to the prison and paid for by the state, were immediately parcelled out amongst the wardens. As a result, prisoners without outside connections saw meat or vegetables maybe once a year.
Living like kings (relatively spoken)
We still had acess to money. The money, that had been concfiscated from us was deposited in the office and could be withdrawn in small amounts of maximum 500 meticais per day. This allowed us to live in relative luxury. There was a little tuck shop, run by prisoners (under corrupt license of one particular warden) that sold some essentials. Cigarettes, (I smoked like a chimmney while in prison) matches, small sachets of "Omo" washing powder for the flourishing laundry industry, razor blades (!), sweets, little manuscript books, sweets, toothpaste and toothbrushes (that lost their bristles after 3 days) and a few more small items. Also tea and sodas. But the real nice thing was their breakfeast. Every moring we would go and collect a thermos of sweet tea, (sugar is comforting under these circumstances) "Zama-Zama biscuits with artificial almond aroma and (most delicious of all) a breadroll with a fried egg inside.
Wow, what a start for another day in the slammer! But lunch was beating it all! Dr. Nhanthumbo was feeding us real delicacies. Every day his wife or their maid would come and bring us a basket with rice (nicely cooked with saffron and curry), chicken or fish and sometimes meat. Also always 4 cans of ice cold soda. I'm sure we were the envy of the whole prison.
our daily routine
The cells were opened at sunrise. Then we were allowed to go outside and start the day by shaking out the stiff limbs and having our breakfeast. By about 7:30 we had to be back in the cells to be counted in a roll call. (Chamada) The names were called up by the "chefe de seguranca" in presence of a warden and one had to confirm one's continued presence by saying "pronto!" or "sto!" (I'm here) in a loud and clear voice. I later learned to enlarge that to "Sto contra vontad" just for the record. (It means: "I'm here against my will") On some days (no recognisable pattern there) we had to line up in the yard and sing the national anthem ("Mozambique e nossa terra gloriosa..." - Mozambique is our glorious country...) After the morning chamada we were essentially left alone for the rest of the day until about 6 pm when we had to re-enter the cells for another roll call. We were trying to stay together as a group even though this was not alway easy. The tension of our uncertain future was gnawing away at us and one or the other, we sometimes lost our nerves a bit. (I guess that's natural under the circumstances) After a while we had our own bamboo mat and a somewhat respected space for it near our cell which would now be our social centre and convening place. What really helped wiling the time away was the fact that we got access to a chess board. I never played as much chess as in Tete in my life and we all improved our game considerably. Prophet had only started learning it in Songo and became quite good at it. Tino was our strongest player, with Carlos and myself being roughly equal. There were quite few champions amongst the fellow inmates, so at times we had really interesting tournaments going. Naturally, because of our limited knowledge of Portuguese we hung out a lot with english speaking prisoners, mostly from Zimbabwe or Malawi. But we also befriended some of the Mozambican inmates. After the evening chamada we were supposed to stay in the cells, on normal days with open cell doors. That was the worst part of the day always. Even with the open cell dors the sweat was running in rivers and the overcrowded situation made any relaxation or even playing chess impossible. From time to time sadistic wardens even took away that little cooling and locked the door. we later learned that they did tha to extract money from prisoners. For 15 meticais you coul buy the right to stay outside until final roll call. Not for us though, the terrorism suspects. On other evenings, with friendlier wardens on duty, we were allowed to sit in front of the cell as long as we did not move away.
Battle by media – the top guns get involved
While this was all unfolding around us, the media storm that had already started during our last days in Songo was gaining Momentum. President Armand Guebuza had gone on record, cautioning the media not to jump to foregone conclusions, but soon made clear that he was going o maintain a neutral position. "let the proper authorities deal with the case" was the mantra. The Mozambican Prime Minister, Mrs. Luísa Dias Diogo, was much more outspoken in stating publicly that we were obviously innocent. Obviously the results of new tests that had now been conducted in Maputo had been leaked to the press. Soon thereafter a TV talk show on prime time National TV dealt with our case. The sociologist was most probably Carlos Serra, who has taken quite an interest in our story. If you can read Portuguese, I recommend you check out his blog here. Since we did not have access to TV (some privilged prisoners did) we got it only from hearsay. A member of parliament, a sociologist and a chemist were discussing our case and somehow all agreeing that is was ridiculous to have us locked up and that the country was opening itself up for all kind of compensation claims apart from the potential diplomatic fallout with Germany and Portugal. This is an understandable reaction for normal, intelligent people with a heart who are not yet woken up to the fact that of course al governments are in this together behind the scenes. References to our incarceration appeared in the press all over the world, most of them of course denouncing us as some kind of "New Age Cult" (brings up associations of Charles Manson or the CIA fabricated mass murder made to look as a mass suicide at Jonestown). One Mozambican newspaper, the weekly independent "Savana" was making a big difference. Their reporters really took the pains of investigaing the story deeply. So we made frontpage News there with the title: 
"Riduculous - like in a bad movie" If you can read Portuguese check out Savana here.
My hat is off in reverence to these courageous and uninhibited journalists. Here is a broad but incomplete selection of further news clippings in reaction to our story:
BBC
allafrica.com
Legalbrief
zimbio.com
highbeam.com
Cape Times
architectafrica.com
Sunday Standard
You can get a picture of the spectrum of reactions if you just type the words "sabotage cahora bassa" or the Portuguese version "sabotagem cahora bassa" in your favourite search engine.
Betrayal - Love your lawyer but never trust him
Dr. Nhantumbo had been the focus of all our hopes and we initially loved him to bits. He is a good looking, intelligent, well articulated and lively African man. We felt that he had true sympathy with our case and there was a bond of friendship developing. After we had been transferred to Tete, he visited us more often and, as stated before, he fed us well. But then things started taking a strange direction: In the first days he gave us the impression that it could only be a matter of days until the prosecution would drop the nonsensical allegation and set us free. Of course his daddy already having been a judge i tete he's a well connected man in the legal scene of Tete province. His sister is prosecutor in Songo where we were first arrested and held for more than 3 weeks. Things were dragging on and on and we were now told that "things had to cool off a bit" first, because Mozambique had to do a face savg operation, couldn't be seen to cave in to foreign pressure or public opinion too easily. The more we were surprised when the formal accusation was handed to us by a clerk of the court. It contained 4 accusations:
1. The crime of "altering goods destined for publich consumption" (read water contamination)
2. The crime of Sabotage (punishable with 8-16 years imprisionment)
3. The crime of smuggling (the orgonite)
4. The crime of conducting unauthorised environmental activities
It turned out that the tests conducted in Maputo, while confirming that the orgonite was essentially what we said it was, still came to hair-raising conclusions about the alleged potential toxicity. Ridiculous when one considers that most of the boats on Cahora Bassa are made of very similar resin in the form of fibreglass and together represent 100s of tons of such resin. It was clear that the sparse and scant laboratory results had been garnished with politically inspired drivel that was presented as part of the report. The laboratory tests that were allegedly conducted in South Africa were not part of the evidence. While we were pondering these accusations and trying to gather eveidence to counter them point by point, we would have expected our dear Dr. Nhantumbo to engage in a flurry of activities, visiting us at least daily (we had 5 days to come up with a counter motion) But Nhantumbo did not come once in this critical period. Not once. Our tension was rising to frantic state. On a sunday in that period a great surprise happened: We were visited by my friend Fungai who had come to bring additional evidence and liaise with Nhantumbo. Through him I learnt that Nhantumbo, instead of working on our case, had been hectically haggling with Friederike over a fee demand of 35,000 US Do
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