Geoff Hazel - Mozambique

A change of career

Well, I joined the Army in '65 as a 17-year-old. Yeah, after a little argument with my stepfather at the time over a girl. She was 23 and he didn't think I was old enough for her. But anyhow, I did infantry training, went to Three Battalion. And eventually ... Well, we did a few other things in Australia, obviously. But then eventually went to Vietnam for the '67/68 tour. We went through Coral–Balmoral, the Tet Offensive in Baria, Operation Pinnaroo in the mountains and a few others.

They suggested that good corporals would go to Kapooka when they came home, was, "You'll be promoted to sergeant." So, I put me hand up to go to Kapooka. And went there as an instructor. Actually, loved the job, but didn't like the town because the town didn't like us. And I put in to go back to Vietnam as a reinforcement. But then I did the first damage to the knee, so that got put off. And then, I'd been there 18 months and got called down to the adjutant's office and said, "Well, here's your promotion to sergeant." And I thought, "Terrific." And then, just before I signed it, she said, "But before we do that, here's your transfer to the training team. They want you to go to them." So, I signed that. Went over and did 12 months as part of the Australian Army Training Team, which was brilliant.

Yeah, probably saw more in that 12 months as far as action went, and there was a lot of action in the first tour. But saw it from a different perspective. When I came home the first time, the only Vietnamese I wanted to see were when I had them in me sights. When you live with them, work with them, got a whole different attitude. So, I think that was good for me, that second tour, really was good. And when you talk to people since then, it was good. And when I came home, I was drill ... Well, I got promoted to sergeant, it was backdated to when the original one was. So, a lot of back pay came through. But I was at Duntroon acting within the infantry sergeant's position in the drill section, because the one that was there was off on medical leave and not supposed to come back.

Went to work one day, and there he was. And the RSM said, "Well, you're going to Wagga." I said, "Who said that?" He said, "The Director of Infantry." "Who's that?" "Colonel Howard." "You mean Harry?" And the person said, "You know the Colonel?" I said, "Yeah, I've been working within six feet of him for nearly 12 months." So, went and saw Harry, and he was the one who told me. He said, "Look, now is the time to go." This was '72. He said, "The end of the year, the Army's going to be cut to pieces. You got somewhere else to go, we won't stop you." So, I left his place and went out to police recruiting, ACT Police recruiting, because where could you be transferred?

ACT Police to Cyprus

It was ACT Police, that was it. And a lot of ex-servicemen were joining. And they were actually targeting ex-servicemen. And the inspector told me when I walked in, without doing anything, he said, "You'll be in. It'll be four months before you can come in, because that's when the next course. But you'll have to come back and do the exams. But don't worry, Sergeant, you're in."

Yep, so four months later, after I did come back and do the exams, I was in. And then became a police officer and did various things. And because I had a young son, I didn't put in for any overseas postings or anything like that because I'd grown up as an Army brat, bounced around from school to school, pillar to pillar. So, I said, "No, until he finishes school, I'm staying in the one place." And then, once he finished school, then started sticking me hand up to go on UN missions as well.

So, not a good career move within the police because they really didn't like it. But I then went to Cyprus was the first one, which was brilliant. It had been running for so long that everything just sort of flowed. And it was a great way to learn UN systems, which became a big help for me when I went to Mozambique.

The Federal Police

I was qualified as an officer. And I was the only officer we had in those days because they had become Australian Federal Police by then with the amalgamation of the organisations. I was the only officer that was really concerned in those days about counterterrorism. And so, wherever I went in my normal job that they had for me, the counter-terrorism guys came with me, the bomb squad came with me, the negotiators came with me, search and rescue came with me, because I was interested in them, and they were all part-timers. So, I became the part-time boss of them as well. In 1979, they amalgamated the ACT Police, the Commonwealth Police as it was then, and part of customs drug enforcement into one organisation.

CIVPOL

Mozambique, it's like any of the UN missions, you have to apply. I'd already done one in Cyprus where I learnt a lot of things. Mozambique came up, Bob Bradley took the first contingent to Mozambique. Now, Bob had been in Cambodia with a team, and they worked together as part of it. Now, I missed Cambodia because I was in Cyprus. But he looked at what he wanted for Mozambique, and he used his Cambodian experience. They were all going to work together. And they literally had to build their own accommodation and their own police station when they were there. So, he put together a team of individuals with a variety of skills that would work together as a totality.

Mozambique was the first time the UN changed the whole system. Contingents did not work together. They were split up from one end of the country to the other end. Well, in their case, pairs. Now, if you put Mozambique into Australia, the southernmost point's roughly Brisbane. The northernmost point is just on the border with New Guinea. And internal communications were virtually non-existent. There was a lot of troubles. And we were getting messages back and they were all complaining about the Muslim mafia, as I called them.

Now, when I got over there and later on when I got to tell them, we broke a few barriers down. The Muslims were telling us about the Christian mafia that existed before the Muslim mafia came in. This was all CIVPOL. It was the first time. What they did, the UN wanted to go, well, A, because the police are so different from different nations. Their qualifications are completely different to each other. I mean, even a simple one, the Swedes. Included in the Swedish police is the people who sit at the borders to do your immigration checks.

They're part of Swedish police. So, they could be on a UN mission as a police officer and never done a day's policing in their life. India, a lot of areas in India. sergeant and down, they do traffic control and security. No investigations. Then you've got the next level up, which are the inspectors which they call sub-officers. They do the police work. And then, above them are the group that are trained to be the officers in charge, but never actually do any police work. So, you've got a wide variety of skills that can be brought to the situation. So, the UN decided to spread the skills, rather than have one area get a lot of good policing and another area get absolutely none. And it was something we'd never experienced before. And there was a lot of culture clashes.

The Australian contingent

Australia said we would come and help, and they would provide 16 police officers. So, Bob took 16, I took 16 to go and replace them. I flew in ... Well, once I saw all the troubles that Bob was having, and you still weren't getting enough to really understand what the problem was, when I did the selection process, and that was the best job I did in the whole mission, I went for people who were good negotiators.

That's what I was after. People that could go into a potentially violent situation, talk it down, have the parties go away and be happy, and know you're not coming back there for at least 48 hours. That was the type of person I wanted. And pretty well, that's what I got.

UN roles

The UN sent in fixed battalions, forward battalions, military observers, civilian police, and an election component, as well as the usual admin people that were there. Yep. The de-mob was the military observers, backed by the forward battalions. Our job was human rights abuses. Any human rights abuses we had to investigate, no matter which side, monitoring the police in what they did, monitoring the prisons, which was a big one, or potentially a big one.

So, they were our three main roles. And obviously everybody actually became involved when it came to the election. Yeah. We were all actually became part of the planning committee for the election in ... Not the election, in an actual observer component of the election.

Set up and processing

It was a mess. I mean, the infrastructure was just about non-existent. I mean, when driving from the airport to the UN headquarters, I'd say 70% of the vehicles on the road on that day were white with UN on the ... Well, actually NU, Nations Unities, because it was in Portuguese, on the side of them. At least 70% of the vehicles were UN. When I flew in, there was ... Fortunately, Bob had two people that were based in Maputo, so I stayed with them. And I found a hotel. I went over a week early to do the processing. And fortunately, I did, because really the UN wasn't overly worried about extra people coming in. Matter of fact, they were pretty pissed off that we were changing people over.

But because I knew the systems, I got in and started organising it, because you had to do a two-day induction course. You had to get a driving test for everybody. And while I was sort of starting to organising, I ran into a Nigerian officer. And he said, "Oh, what are you doing?" And I told him. And he said, "Can we join in with you? We've been sitting here for five days and nobody's even spoken to us yet." So, I took him with me. And we then got the package set up, which took about ... It was a five-day package getting everybody issued with everything they need. I mean, I already had the photographs and everything. And I got all the UN ID cards printed and ready. And when the boys landed, I was inside the airport to deliver them to them as they got off the plane.

So, knowing the systems, which is what Cyprus gave me, I got everything set. So, when the boys arrived, we got them up and running and on the way very quickly. And the Nigerians were rapt because they got to do the same thing. It was there in that week was the first time I ever ran across a place where I was not liked purely because I was an Australian. I had never come across that before anywhere. And the Malays didn't like us, and that was because of something one of our prime ministers had said about their prime minister, you know? I mean, that was big, that was a big issue with them at the time.

A bit of a stuff up

The Pakistanis and the Indians didn't particularly like us over something. And I can't remember what, but it all revolved around cricket. So, there was the issue there. Some of the other individuals had had run-ins with some of Bob's people who'd been put in ... Well, when they first arrived, there was a Swede that was the commissioner who had actually worked with the Australians in Cyprus.

So, he put almost every one of Bob's people in positions of command from one end of the country to the other. Now, some people thrived on it and knew what they were doing. But he had a hell of a lot of people that really did not have an idea what to do. And it became a bit of a stuff up with those individuals. They should never have been put in that position. But when the Swedish commissioner went home because his wife got sick, and he stayed one week too long, he was replaced with an Egyptian, who promptly started changing positions across the country. And that's where we get the Christian mafia versus the Muslim mafia.

Accommodation and a brothel

I mean, with the UN, with the police, you get mission subsistence allowance. The UN issues you with a beret, an ID card and hopefully a driver's license. If you don't get your driver's license, you're supposed to go home, and a vehicle. The rest of it ... Oh, and the cravat. The rest of it, they provide you with cash and you provide your own accommodation, your own food. And you can go to the UN medical. Being the second group, the first group had already had established accommodation. 

So, when I got to Beira, they'd just moved into what Bob had been in and the house he was in, which was interesting. It was a duplex. We had the largest portion of the downstairs area, or the small area next to it and the upstairs. But the other half was actually a brothel. An operating brothel. And their prime customers were African UN personnel. And the girls that worked there, they had their kids living with them. 

And we got on great with their kids. We even had one of our boys say, I taught him how to sing, "I want to want to be, a walla, wallaby." But yeah, so the house was there. I mean, it was upcoming, it was a house. The power was on most of the time, except when it went out for the whole town. Water ran for about an hour and a half each morning. And you collected it, and we had ... Bob had a house boy. And we reemployed him because he was good. And yeah, your food was a bit of an issue. But yeah, apart from that.

All or nothing

Well, to start with, when I got there, I flew up to Beira three days before Bob did a handover to me. And then, they left and the rest of the boys ... Well, they were scattered across the country. But the ones between Maputo and Beira came by convoy delivering vehicles in pairs. They took three days to do the trip. And once they got there, we set up.

Once again, I couldn't get to meet the regional commander. Now, Bob had been the regional commander originally. But he'd just been pushed aside and he was just doing planning. And you know, couldn't get to meet him, so I got put on as a worker on the delivering equipment out to the new outposts that were being set up, which was not a problem. And then, well, one of the things I told the boys in the first two days when they were there was, "Whatever job they give you, do it. And do it better than anybody else." And anyhow, so I did that job. And then I was put onto the patrol crew for the city. And then, I turned up for the night shift and I was the only one there.

The rest of the patrol, they weren't going to go out there at night. They might get shot by the locals, because, let's be honest, just about every house had an AK47 in it. Even though theoretically they'd been handed in, just about every house had at least one AK47. And I was out this night and one of the UN drivers had an accident. It was a Jordanian in the UN vehicle. So, I went out and did the investigation and came in, had it all typed up and delivered it to the provincial commander, who was an Indian, the next morning before I went home to have a sleep and come back for the 3:00 for the afternoon session. And I came back at 3:00 and he said, "No, no, no.

You're not in that. You are now my provincial investigations officer. That was a good report." Terrific. So, that led to, I got sent off to the hospital because there was somebody there who'd been shot by the police. Okay, so I went in. I did an interview, and it really boiled down ... This was a big eye-opener on Mozambique, which is something that hadn't been covered by our foreign affairs person. Mozambicans do not work on compromise. It's all or it's nothing. They will take either. But you try and put something in the middle, then they demand all.

Investigating a shoot out

there had been a factory that had closed down during the troubles. A Swedish company had bought it, started to reopen it. And just thought well, the best thing was to reemploy the people that used to be there. So, they did. And then the people said, "Well, you owe us money because we didn't get paid." And they said, "Look, we'll give you half," trying to do the right thing.

That was it. It's all or nothing. So, they actually turned up armed. So, the armed police went in, and there was a gunfight. Now, neither side can actually tell me who fired the first shot. All the ones I spoke to from both sides. And there was even suggestion it was actually from somebody that wasn't actually in either group. But the thing was, the police were trained, the other guys weren't. I think five of them or three of them were killed and about five or six in hospital with gunshot wounds. But they all sat down, and I went through the whole lot. And really, it was a day and a half later. And then, put that report together. And put that in. And all of a sudden, I get the message from the regional commander, I'm now on the regional investigations team.

On that one, when I ... A lot depended, as I found out later, a lot depended on what I recommended. And basically, following the UN definitions of self-defence, the local police had fired in self-defence. It was a fair fight, so there was no repercussions on the police. Later ones where the police have done something, I would send the report through. And I happened to know because you never get told what's done. But when you turn up to visit the local prison and here's the police officer sitting behind the bars. So, I asked, he said, "Oh, he did such and such and the UN found him guilty." In other words, whatever I put on there was what was carried out.

Distributing clothes and a Hill's Hoist

Yeah, interacting with the locals, we did that a few times. I mean, probably a prime one, when the clothing arrived that we were going to hand out. We actually found a local priest who was running a displaced persons village, really. They were all women, all kids basically there. Their husbands had been on one side or the other and had been killed in the war. And we said, "Righto, we'll bring the clothes," our share, because each group, we split them up. They went right over the country. Our share, we'll take them up and hand them out. And he said, "You should just give them to me." And I said, "No, we'll come up and hand them out." I'm a trusting soul, but not that trusting. Anyhow, we started handing them out. And no, there was no way. They had no concept of waiting in line and just get your ... Everybody wanted everything.

So, in the end, we gave them to him. Now, that's another story. And then, once that was all done, that's when we erected the Hills Hoist play gyms at this place. And yes, I learnt a lesson. You've got to put exactly the right bolt in exactly the right place. We got to the very end, and the last nut would not fit on the first one. And we had to undo back until we found where we put the wrong one. And it was a very, very hot day that day. But anyhow, that all worked well. Two days later, the girls next door at work were wearing some of our stuff we'd ... So, I went and fronted the priest. And he said, "Yep." We said, "Really?" He said, "I didn't need clothes." He said, "I needed money to buy medicines and food." He said, "So, we went down the markets and sold them." Okay, I'm happy with that.

The Muslim system

Serious breach of human rights, I did myself. So, more than three killed. Anything that was going to cost the UN money, motor vehicle accidents are the main ones of them. And internal affairs issues became my job with the two people I worked with. There was Paulo, who was a Brazilian. It was brilliant having him because he spoke Portuguese and I didn't need an interpreter.

And Seko, I think, one of the Nigerians, anyhow, was with ... That was the three-man regional team. But our main job was going through and checking over everything, and then following up on it. And quite often, I mean, there was just an absolute balls up because there was one contingent, they were all there, and all were majors. But they were actually a unit of a counter terrorism police unit, who were being rewarded because they'd wiped out a nest of fundamentalists. So, none of them had an idea how to be a police officer. And there was one report that was done by one of them and a Jordanian captain. And I immediately gave somebody else the job of going to do it again because it was such ...

Anyhow, a couple of days later, I took the Jordanian with me to go out to another village, just to ... And he was very good. We got talking and he said, I said, "Look, why was your other report so bad? And you did a good job here." He said, "Oh, sir. You do not understand the Muslim system." And I said, "What do you mean?" He said, "Well, in the Muslim system, you cannot appear to be smarter than your superior. You must be ..." He said, "With you, sir, I have no problem." He said, "I will never be the policeman you are." be said, "but that major, he was not a policeman."

The supply chain

We had one group right up on the border in the very northwest. And they apparently were living in a very good compound because it was an NGOs compound that had been built. But they had no power, no running water. They had a water truck, because they used to go down, fill up, and come back and draw the water from that. And their food ... Well, they used to get their food from Malawi. But then, that travel across borders to buy anything had been banned. And whoever was up in that area it was decided had to comply. So, we'd taken ... Each of us had taken 10 days' ration packs with us.

So, just sent the message around, "Righto, get to me five for your 10 days." And we shipped all that off to them. Then, Shan found a UN generator, which we shipped north. And then, somebody up there actually recognised it and sent it back. But then the boys up north found one and sent. So, we got a generator up and running. And then, in Beira there was an Australian there who was there as a town planner with an NGO working with the local government. He was going at least every second weekend to Harari to visit his family. So, he started bringing back eskies full of meat for us. It was something you just couldn't get. And so, he'd bring it back really frozen. We fixed our freezer up and put it in there, really deep froze it.

And then, when we heard that the Japanese movement control at the airport, felt sorry for them. I mean, they were so used to things working on time. The UN didn't. But they would call me and say, "The flight's coming in." We would deliver to them the food to put on the flight when it left in eskies. They would tell the movement controller in the north, who would then call the boys up there, and they'd pick it up, put it in their freezer, and then send it on the next day. So, you found ways to get around things and to do things. So, that was all part of it. I mean, just feeding yourself was sometimes a problem.

King Tiger prawns and bug tails

There was a pub around the corner, which we went to. The food there was absolutely horrible, greasy. But you could have a drink. But there was no way in the world you'd have too much to drink. And I mean, that was 100 metres away. And across the road from that was the beach. But when you saw what was on the beach, you didn't go walking on the beach, never mind swimming in the water. There was always a young ... Well, one of the locals used to turn up every day with his bag full of King Tiger prawns and mostly sand that he wanted to sell. And I knew where he was catching them and I knew where the sewer outlet was, so I was not having anything to do with that.

But we actually ran into, at one stage, two Aussies we saw walking in the street. They just yelled, so we went. They were both captains of South African fishing trawlers that were fishing in the straits between Mozambique and Madagascar for bug tails and King Tiger prawns. So, he said, "Look, we come in here once a month. As long as you've got a video that you can give us with some football on it," and they didn't care what type, "We'll just give you prawns and bug tails." So, the videos had been shipped over to us every week, and we used to share them around, send them around.

The dollar line

Well, I used to ring home every Sunday, because we could ring. Now, part of that was to pass information to one crew that I just could not get to any other way. So, Margaret would ring his wife, and they would exchange stories, and then they'd ring back and we'd pass on information that way. Then the AFP said they wanted a fax line put into the house, so that we could send faxes and report to them.

Now, in Mozambique, you could get that was called a dollar line, you had to pay in US dollars. So, we had the line put in and fax put in. But that had to come out of ... I had to pay for that upfront from my MSA. And the AFP, well they reimbursed me for everything.

Breaking down the barriers

The big difficulties were culture within the UN. And that really was just a matter because nobody really knew what the others were like and how they worked… one of the things we learnt before we went away, what was precious over there was paper. So, we actually took a trunk full of A4 paper and notepads and all that, which became excellent bartering material. And that also got us in with different people. And we broke down the problems that had been there. By the time we'd finished, with the one exception of an individual, I think we'd broken down the problems that had existed when Bob was there. And that was the one who was the regional commander, he really still had a problem with Australians.

And when I got back to Maputo, I was actually invited into meet the commissioner. And we sat there and had a talk for three and a half hours in his office. And then, he came to our medal parade. And it was the first medal parade that he'd been to in the UN since he'd been there. He hadn't been to any of the others, he'd always sent somebody else. So yeah, purely by just treating people right, we broke down the barriers, and only because we'd been forewarned, there's an issue. We didn't understand the issue. And really, it was a cultural issue. People just didn't understand.

Planning to withdraw

Well , the election was over. There was then another two, three weeks when we weren't allowed to go anywhere because everybody was worried that, hey, they might not accept it and we might be going back to war. That didn't happen. Another week went by and everything's all right. Everybody can start having their days off again. Frank got two days off and somebody else got two days off. I had a request in to do a trip to visit all the people and was approved. And all of a sudden they told me, "No."

The newly elected government in agreement with the newly elected opposition said, "Well, thank you very much, UN. You can go home now." And the UN said, "All right, we're into withdrawal phase now. No more leave. Start planning the withdrawal." And that became my job for central region. He called me straight away and took me off the investigations, and I became one of the two planners for how the withdrawal would occur within the region.

Crocodiles, lions, and alleged elephants

Well , there were a lot of crocodiles in Mozambique. A hell of a lot of crocodiles. Now, we had one where they ... Basically, every day you heard about locals being taken by crocodiles. And one of the patrols actually found one, they had the leg taken, but the person was okay. And he called up and he wanted me to get the UN helicopter down so we could get this person to hospital. It was one hell of an argument that I didn't win. "No, we're not here to pick up and move locals, it just will not happen."

And it's just something that occurs in other regions. They didn't have insurance for moving locals. So, they weren't going to do anything without the insurance. So, the idea was then that ... So, they put him in the car, which they got told not to do, but they did it. But by the time they got him to hospital, he died. So, yeah. But there was another one with that, when I got a call to the radio room because one of the outstations where they were living in tents was there. And they were sort of saying they wanted me to send out some of the Italian military unit that was there, the battalion. And I asked them why. They said, "Well, sir, the lions are eating the voters.

And we are worried that they are going to eat the CIVPOL," because there was very few animals left in the country because they'd all ... During the war, they'd been killed for food. And there was obviously a pride of lions out there that was feeding on locals. And the CIVPOL were a bit worried that they were next in line to be lion food. But not much you could do about that. And then, there was another one, a report with an elephant. Now, the vehicle came in, and it was a mess. Yes. And a herd of elephants had come into the camp and trampled and attacked this UN vehicle. They, for some reason, it was obvious it had been rolled about five times. But that was their story, and they were sticking to it. And following my principle that no local had been hurt or anything, that was it.

An arrest

There was one, and probably one of the worst experiences in my life was, I had to go to the hospital again. This time there was a five-year-old there that had been injured in a UN motor vehicle accident. And walking into that kid's ward damn near tore me to pieces. I mean, I can still now, I can still smell it, I can still see it, I can still hear it. It was just unbelievably bad. Got talking, and that had been from the next province. So, I had to go up there and follow up on the investigation. Now, when I got there, an interesting story again, because this is completely different.

I arrived, and they weren't happy with an investigator coming from regional headquarters. We've already written that off. So, I looked at it, and there's no mention about a five-year-old being injured. Matter of fact, there's no mention of anybody being injured. Okay, so I'm starting to go through files. And next thing, I look around and there's only me and an Irish constable there. Everybody else has gone. And there's this noise outside. So, we open the door and the police station is surrounded, or the UN offices are surrounded by all these locals, and they've got guns.

So, we're standing there, and fortunately one of them spoke very good English. And we started to talk. And he said, "Well ..." And this would have been 7:00, 7:30 at night. So, it's been a long day. And we started to talk. And he said they were all people who had applied to become drivers for the UN. And they'd been interviewed by a UN civilian and a local interpreter. And they had all paid money to get the job. And then, they hadn't got the job because they brought in two Australians, which are two of my boys, to do driver testing. And those that failed the test didn't get the job. And most of them couldn't drive to save themselves, they'd never driven. But they were now upset. They didn't want the job, they understood that. That part they understood.

What they were upset about was that the UN people and the local had gone away with all this money of theirs, and they wanted their money back. So, we're just sitting there and we're just chatting. And they said, "We know where the local lives." Okay. So, "We'll follow you." So, we followed him in the car, the two of us and we got there. And they were already there around the house. And they weren't game to go in because they knew he had an AK in there, it was just a typical Mozambican house. So, we went in. And I came and had a talk to him. He was so glad to see us, he thought he was safe. So, I said, "Righto, you just stay here." I went out and I said, "Right, we're going to bring him out. But if anybody touches him or hurts him in any way, then that person's got to deal with me." Okay, they accepted that. We brought him out, put him in the car. And the other thing I said, "And we will follow you to the local police station when we leave here." "Yes, sir." So, we got him in the car.

He thought we were taking him back to the UN headquarters, and we took him to the local police station. Went in there, told them the story. Left him and said, "Look, we will be back tomorrow morning. You can do your interviews, but he better not have a mark on him. There will be no forced confessions." "Yes, sir." And they were good. And we went back the next morning. He'd admitted to everything. And so, he was processed through the local legal system. The UN employee, by the time I got the message to Maputo, was already on the plane on his way home…Yeah, well the UN reimbursed the money…Yeah. But then I went and followed up on the accident.

And it turns out that it wasn't just a five-year-old girl. Over a distance of 600 meters, he'd killed three people while he was driving, and she was the last one that was injured. So, put that report in and basically said he should go home. Now, it turns out he had contacts of some sort, and he didn't. And although I wasn't doing ... When they were withdrawing, he actually killed another one when they were driving the vehicles out. So, he should never have been ... That should never have happened. But that was one of the things you had to deal with.

Selecting the right team

I think the best work I did was in the interview process before we left in selecting the people. Every one of them did a great job. Every one of them, the whole lot had started at the bottom rungs of wherever we were. And by the time we finished, I mean, there was a deputy regional commander in northern region. There's a provincial commander.

There was a number of investigations officers. So, as a team, in our final dinner we had before we left, I said to them, I said, "Righto." I mean, I was part of a group that called itself the team. I said, "I've now been part of a second group that can call themselves the team." And I was really proud of them, what they did as individuals.

Long hours

It was a good mission. It was great. While the election period itself was absolutely ... I mean, 4:00 AM start. Well, first day, there was going to be two days of voting and one day of counting. To get all these international observers out, we had to start moving them at 4:00 AM. So, it was a 3:30 get out of bed, drive to the hotel. Now, as I'm driving to the hotel, I drove past one of the polling sites. And all the locals were there lined up, dressed in their Sunday best. And I just looked at them and I thought, "Wow." So, there was the little team, the planning team had now become the emergency response team for problems.

So, we decided, right, we'll get everybody out, then we'll go and have breakfast. Yes, we got everybody out. And by the time we got the last lot out, the first lot were reporting there's an issue. I mean, it might be there was no ink for them to dip their fingers in. There was ballot papers hadn't turned up and little things. So, we spent all morning running around from that. And we finally stopped at about 2:00 and went and had breakfast. That night, when they all came back in, we had to debrief them and get everything ready. Now, that night finished at 1:00 AM, by the time we had everybody in and settled. And so, we went up and we were back at 4:00 to get them out again.

That time, we didn't get all the provinces because they'd been sorted. But we were still, by the time we finished that night was 9:00 PM, finished a lot earlier. But they hadn't been able to get everybody to vote. So, the decision was, they'd allowed an ... Had an extra day there. They'd allowed the extra day. They said, "Right, we're going to have a third day of voting, and then we'll do the counting on the fourth day." So, once again, it was 4:00 AM, everybody out. That one finished in the vicinity of 8:00 PM, so it wasn't too bad.

Conflict resolution

And next morning, I think it was Shan and I drove at 6:00 left the next morning to drive to the nearby province headquarters to do an internal investigation into a fight between two. Got back, coming back that afternoon or that evening, heard a call over the radio calling to help because shots had been fired. And anyhow, nobody answered, which didn't surprise me because I didn't recognise ... I recognised the voice, but I didn't recognise the call sign. And it was Charles Mackay] who was from Zambia, Zambian police, Superintendent Charles Mackay from Zambia…but spoke with a perfect Scottish accent.

Anyhow, we turned up and there was police in the street. There was, obviously somebody had let loose with a burst from, because there was holes in tires and holes in the sides of cars. Nobody has been hit or anything. So, the two of us get out, and there's a building over there, the police are here. And so, we're trying to find out what's going on. And they were the election workers from the local election workers. Now, they hadn't been paid for the fourth day. And they knew, if these people didn't pay them now, they would never get it. So, they were determined to get their money for the fourth day. And they'd ambushed the local electoral president in his car and were wanting the money. And somebody had smashed the car window and he'd been hit. He wasn't ... He was only hit, he wasn't seriously injured.

Anyhow, the police had turned up, and they'd all run into this building, and they were all in there. And the police said, "Well, we're going to go charging in." And so, I'm standing with the police, the commander of the group. And Shan said, "I'll follow them." So, he followed them in. And he said, "Lucky I did." Bloke that went in, "Lucky I did." He said, "None of them had a torch and it was pitch black inside." He said, "So, I went and turned the torch on. We found the door where everybody was." And he said, "Because I was there, they brought them all out." Nobody went in, no shots were fired. They came out. Now, I'd called up headquarters and said, "Look, I want some more CIVPOL here, preferably a couple that might be able to speak Portuguese." I knew exactly who would turn up, the two Brazilians who were there, who were really good. They knew what they were doing. They were good.

Anyhow, sure enough, the vehicle pulled up about 500 metres down the road, driven by somebody else who was not coming any closer. And these two guys came out and helped us out. And we got that resolved and got the message away. "Right, well done. Now, we'll be in there in the morning at the police station to check on these people to make sure they haven't been injured." And we did. Next morning we went in there. They said, "Right, we waited until you came in so you could see that the ones we will release hadn't been hurt."

So, they let 18 of them go and charged the one who'd actually broken the window and injured the person. Right, happy with that. That's part of the procedure. Yeah. Shan kept ... He did most of the checking of the prison. The prison wasn't great. But I went out there a couple of times, and yeah, it was okay. It wouldn't have been acceptable in Australia. But I kept telling him, I said, "Shan, it is better than the children's ward at the hospital." He wouldn't believe me, so I took him. He said, "I'm not going to complain about the prison again ever, boss."

A trunk load of paper

So, before we left, we gave what was left of our paper to the local administrator, because they didn't have any. So, he got a trunk full of paper. We had an excellent medical kit. We had a trunk full of medical stuff. We gave all of that to the hospital. Now, there was only one problem with all of that. I think I'd been home about two months and I got called to the commissioner's office.

And he handed me this letter, which had been translated from the local government administrator thanking me for donating this paper to him. And the commissioner said, "What the hell is all that about?" So, I explained this to him. And he said, "Righto, yep. Happy with that."