Lost and Found in South Africa – “God was Listening”

It’s Monday 16 February, 2016. Dianne and I have just spent an idyllic 3 weeks in Hermanus in South Africa with our family that gathered from Australia, England, the USA and various parts of South Africa to spend time with 86-year old family matriarch Jennifer Stewart.

With our US Dollars, we and the Brits are the only ones grateful to SA President Jacob Zuma for trashing the value of the Rand against the Dollar and the Pound – a Fillet Chateaubriand sets us back a staggering $11, a bottle of Alto Rouge under $4, calamari a whopping $5 and a bottle of Scotch sets us back $10. Consequently, we thoroughly enjoyed South Africa’s excellent cuisine and equally excellent exchange-rate.

Packing our bags for the flight back to the USA, I noticed that those nasty little buggers that crawl into your clothes and shrink the waistline have been at my money-belt as well. What was a great fit when I left the USA is now an uncomfortably tight fit just 3 weeks later. Nonetheless, the money-belt containing our passports, USA Permanent Residence “green-cards”, air-tickets and some $600 in cash is strapped tightly around my waist as I load far more suitcases into the vehicle than we seemed to have brought with us.

Irritated by the too-tight money-belt, I unstrapped it and placed it on the roof of the vehicle and continued to load the bags. Needless to say, that’s where it remained when we hit the road to return a second vehicle loaned from my mother.

About to head off to Cape Town an hour later, the penny dropped. A quick search revealed that the money-belt was no longer on the roof. We rushed back to the point of departure and checked every inch of the route we had travelled over the previous hour. Nothing. Then thinking that someone may have picked it up and handed it in to the police, we checked there. Nothing. Then, thinking that some villain may have picked it up, scurried into the bush alongside the road to extract the valuables before discarding the rest, we searched there as well. Nothing.

Finally accepting that the money-belt was really lost, it was damage control. First call was to the US Embassy in Cape Town to enquire about getting temporary “green-cards” to allow us back into the USA. We were told to get our passports first and then to go to the embassy. The loss of the “green-cards” was our biggest shock – it had taken us a 14-year battle to secure permanent residence in the USA, including visits to the hallowed halls of Congress in Washington DC and voluntary self-deportation to Ireland, and this was our first overseas trip as permanent residents of the USA.

Second call was to the Irish Consulate in Pretoria. All they needed were copies of the passports, a copy of my Irish birth certificate and a copy of Dianne’s Irish naturalization certificate. Incredibly I just happened to have these saved on my laptop. I am told that the Cape Town office can arrange for temporary travel documents to be issued within a day or so.

Realizing that we are not going to make our 12 noon flight the following morning, I call Qatar Airlines to cancel our tickets pending receipt of new Irish travel documents and new “green-cards”. However, every phone number for Qatar Airlines is either out of order or engaged. After almost an hour of repeatedly trying to get through to Qatar Airlines, we pack it in for the day. We’ll have dinner and then head off to Cape Town, 2 hours drive from Hermanus. At least it will be closer to the airport and the Qatar Airlines office and proximate to the US Embassy and the Irish Consulate. Adding to the stress is that I have to drive to Washington DC on Tuesday for an ExecuRead training course that I’m presenting to the US Navy, something I cannot afford to cancel or miss.

My brother-in-law, the Rev Dr James Gray advises us to keep faith and that all is not lost. He leads us in prayer that we will overcome this set-back. Dianne activates Facebook to have friends in Hermanus remain vigilant for any signs of the lost money-belt and to ask for prayers that something positive will come out of this mess. The story goes viral and we hear from people all over the world, offering prayers and support. Mercifully, no-one tells me what an idiot I am for placing the money-belt on the roof of the vehicle. I feel bad enough as it is.

And again the penny drops. My US cell-phone is in the money-belt. I activate “find my iPhone” but the phone appears to be offline. So we start calling the phone but it keeps going to voice-mail. Perhaps wishful thinking that an iPhone 6 survived falling off the roof of a moving SUV on a busy road.

“James” I say, “you have a better hotline upstairs than I do. We really do need some help here.”

“Sure” he replies, “but you do realize that God is not sitting around waiting to attend to your needs?”

“I know that” I reply, “but will you please intercede and ask him to listen up. We need some urgent help here. We need to jump the line for his intervention.”

So James leads us in prayer again.

Dianne tries calling my US cell-phone again. And it’s answered. In broken English, Patrick S says he has the money-belt and yes it has passports and cash and he is in Khayelitsha, the sprawling township outside Cape Town. He tells us he saw it fall off the roof of our vehicle, he flashed his lights at us and when we failed to respond, he stopped to retrieve the money-belt and then failed to find us and so continued his journey back to Cape Town. He gives us his cell-phone number and suggests we meet at the Lingelethu West Police Station in Khayelitsha.

I call him back on his number and verify that his name is Patrick, that I have his correct number and we confirm our meeting for later that night as we have a 2-hour drive from Hermanus to Cape Town.

Our friends of course caution that this is a set-up and warn us about going into Khayelitsha at any time, more especially after dark. We are warned that we might successfully make it to the police station but will most likely be ambushed after leaving the police station. Secretly, I feel that God would not have answered my prayers in leading us to Patrick only to allow us to be attacked afterwards. However, to appease everyone, we arrange to rendezvous with Dianne’s sister at a filling station on the highway outside Khayelitsha where we will transfer all the bags and occupants to her vehicle and I will go on alone into the township.

Of course, all of this is being broadcast to the world through Facebook by my PR-guru wife. So calls with advice, counsel and cautionary warnings are plentiful.

Then a call from Gavin McJannet, a film producer friend that we last saw some 25 years ago. “Hey guys, saw your sh*t on Facebook. I’m about an hour away from you. Need a hand?”

“Thanks Gavin, too far for you to travel. I’m sure we will be fine.”

Now Gavin and his Land Rover have crossed pretty much every inch of Africa in search of movie locations, and many of his crew live in and around Khyelitsha, so it was not totally unexpected to have this white knight charge into the rendezvous filling-station in search of another adventure, especially as he knew exactly where Lingelethu West police station was situated.

Thirty minutes later, we meet Patrick outside the police station, a charming African who insists that I verify that everything is still present in my money-belt. We talk, shake hands and he gratefully accepts my reward money in Rands which he says he prefers to Obamas (Dollars), although money can never totally acknowledge or reciprocate the value of what he did for us. I hope and pray that only good things lie ahead for this man.

The following morning, as scheduled, we flew out of Cape Town on our return flight to America.

In reflection, was it by chance that my money-belt was picked up by an honest person? Was it by chance that I had left my US cell-phone in that money-belt? Was it by chance that the phone was not damaged in the fall or driven over by a following vehicle? Was it by chance that although I was able to contact the US Embassy and the Irish Consulate, I could not contact Qatar Airlines to cancel our flights? Was it by chance that after repeated unsuccessful calls to that phone, we tried one last time and had the call answered?

I don’t think so. I believe that God was listening.

Bruce Stewart
Charlotte NC, USA