Fleeing the Civil war in Libya …

You spent time in North Africa, first at Club Africain in Tunisia and then at Al Akhdar in Libya … In Tunisia it was my first spell out of Zimbabwe so I was just happy to be there – especially at a big club like Club Africain. I didn’t play much, but it helped me familiarise myself with big teams outside the borders. Libya was really a brief, yet testing experience because you eventually had to flee the civil war ... I had been in Libya for a short time playing for Al Akhdar in the town of Al Bayda. We played a friendly game against Sudanese club Al-Merreikh on a Friday some time back in February 2011 and we beat them 2-0. Then the following day we heard that there had been political disturbances just 140km away in Benghazi. At first I thought it was something minor because Libya had seemed a good country for me – I thought I would play my football there for a long time to come – but by the Monday the fighting had reached our town and from that day onwards we stayed indoors for two to three weeks while hearing gunshots outside. Luckily we never saw the people being shot dead since we were always in the house. That must have been very frightening? My wife was heavily pregnant with our second child at the time and for one week I couldn’t speak with her and they couldn’t get through to me because all communication channels had been shut down in Libya, including the internet. So people back home were really worried because they weren’t sure what was going on, and all they were seeing on television was that the war was getting worse. How did you manage to leave? We couldn’t get out of Libya at that time as it had been declared a no-fly zone. Luckily they reached a ceasefire which then presented us with a chance to travel to Egypt by road and catch a flight to Johannesburg and then Harare afterwards. So I had a 12-hour drive with players from Mali, Cameroon and Ivory Coast. Even though there was a ceasefire we were still panicking when we left our hideout, but luckily the driver had a letter from our club to give to the authorities on the way. When we got to the Egyptian border it was tense as there were a lot of people without passports fleeing Libya and the Egyptians didn’t want them in their country. Fortunately with us all was in order. How did it feel to get home? There was this song by J Cole called ‘I’m coming home’ which was a hit at the time. The moment I knew that I was on my way home I posted that song on my Facebook status just to let the world know. It was one hell of a disturbing experience to be caught in such a situation in a foreign country where Arabic is the dominant language of communication. I had never experienced such problems before.