When the ATM Ate My Debit Card at the Tanzania/Zambia Border

Joys after a 30-hour train ride and a 16-hour bus ride!

We arrived at the Zambia border on December 7th, 2021. Our Tanzanian transit visa, valid for only 7 days, was expiring that day. It was now 10:00 pm.

We had just taken a 30-hour train ride from Kigoma, Tanzania to Dar Es Salaam, then 6 hours later got on a 16-hour bus ride that would take us to the Zambia border. We were exhausted.

We were told in Dar that the bus ticket we were purchasing would get us all the way to Lusaka, Zambia. What they didn’t tell us was that it would be on two separate buses.

So you can imagine our shock when we were kicked off of our bus at the border and told that the next bus was at 4:00 am.

We were not only tired of the travel, but we were also hungry since our bus barely stopped for food along the way, let alone a bathroom break.

The usual mob jumped on us as we disembarked the bus. We were still perplexed about the fact that the bus we were on wasn’t going all the way to Lusaka, and we needed a moment to regroup. Of course, that can’t happen when 20 people are yelling at you to follow them, and are trying to take your suitcases away from you. As usual, it was an onslaught for the senses.

One guy was insistent that we follow him to a hotel. Tanzanians speak Swahili and trying to explain to this guy that we needed to go to the border was near impossible. Finally, Chris lost it and just screamed “NO!” This prompted him to call his friend to come and talk to us. Thankfully he spoke some English.

We knew that the most important thing we had to do that night was to get stamped out of Tanzania or face fines the next morning.

The next man also tried to convince us to go to a hotel first, but we were adamant. We wanted to get our stamp first, then we could figure out how to move forward. Of course, they don’t understand the importance of these things.

Finally, the man agreed to take us to the immigration office. On the way, I asked him if we would need a PCR test to pass into Zambia the following morning. “Yes, you will need a test,” he said. “They take overnight to get the results.”

“Will they be ready by 4:00 tomorrow morning?” I asked.

“I think so.” He said.

“Okay, then we need an ATM because we don't have enough money for them.”

“Sure, there is one over here.” He said as he changed course and headed to another building with us hot on his heels.

I entered the building and immediately saw an ATM from a bank I didn’t recognize. The symbols on the door were all Mastercard and Cirrus symbols, there weren't any Visa or Plus symbols. ‘Uh oh.’ I couldn’t help but think.

All we have are Visa cards and Plus debit cards, and in my state of hunger, exhaustion, and confusion with the whole situation, I didn’t notice that there was another ATM just down the hallway.

I entered hesitantly, with a lump in my stomach. If this didn’t work then we were up shit creek.

I pushed my card into the slot and immediately noticed that it was sticky and hard to push in, never a good sign.

I went through the motions of the transaction, and much to my relief, the machine started counting bills, ready to spit them out. I waited with anticipation for my card and money to come out.

Finally, the card started coming out, then it stopped. I could see it, almost to the point where I could grab it and pull on it, but not quite. I quickly dug another card out of my wallet and tried to use it to pry the card out of the slot. Maybe it was just caught on something, I reasoned.

After a few moments of this, the ATM started beeping loudly at me. A note on the screen. PLEASE TAKE YOUR CARD!

FOR CHRIST'S SAKE! I was now in a panic. This went on for what seemed like an eternity, but I’m sure was just a minute or so.

And then, the horror. My card was sucked back into the machine.

Another note popped up on the screen. YOU HAVE TAKEN TOO LONG TO RETRIEVE YOUR CARD.

I won’t get into the long line of expletives that I unleashed at that moment. We were so tired and so hungry, and now THIS? It was almost unbearable.

I went back outside and told the man that my card was taken. The money exchange counter that was attached to the machine stated that it opened at 8:00 am. We would be missing our 4:00 bus.

“It’s okay, there are other buses,” He told me. At least that brought some relief to the situation. But now how do we get our PCR tests? Clearly, that machine wasn’t working.

“There are other ATMs in there. Maybe you can get money from another one?”

WHAT? I went back inside and lo and behold, the bank that we had been using in Tanzania, all along, had a nice shiny ATM little ways down the hallway.

I cursed myself for not noticing it the first time, but thankfully I had another card, so I used that and easily got out the money we needed to head to the border.

Meanwhile, Chris was waiting outside further along and had no idea what was happening and why things were taking so long.

“The machine ate my debit card,” I told him as I approached.

“You are fu*king kidding me!” He said.

“We can’t get it back until tomorrow morning at 8:00. But there was another machine and I used the Visa card to get cash for the tests.”

“Wow, what a happy set of circumstances. What about our bus?” He asked.

I explained that there were more later in the day, though we didn’t know if they would honor our ticket that we paid for that would take us all the way to Lusaka.

We made our way to immigration. As we approached the man said, “Let me go in first and talk to the doctor. Maybe I can convince him that you don’t need a test and he can just sign a paper for you.”

Ummmmmm okay? We were confused as we didn’t exactly know what he was talking about. Little did we know, at the time, that this is common practice at some of these borders. We were learning as we went, and of course, anything goes in Africa!

He came back outside and told me to stuff 500 Kwatcha, about $30 USD into each of our passports, then pass them to the doctor inside.

We entered the building, found the doctor, and did as we were told. As promised, the doctor gave us a piece of paper, that presumably was a statement declaring that we had a negative PCR test. In all honesty, we never did look at it, and never were asked for it the next morning when we crossed into Zambia. It wasn’t until days later that I looked at it. All it said was that we looked to be physically healthy but we were to get a test once we entered Zambia at a registered testing facility. Ha! $60 bucks for nothing! Not to mention the annoyance of the ATM. What a shit show!

Once that was finished, we finally went to the Tanzanian immigration to get stamped out of the country. We had about an hour left on our visa! The man was pleasant and didn’t even mention the deadline.

Phew, relief. Okay, fine, now we can go to a hotel. Laughingly, after getting stamped OUT of Tanzania, we walked back in without any problems, and the man took us to a nearby hotel, one that I’m sure he gets commission for in bringing guests. We paid him a tip for his services and settled into our room. We assumed that we would see him the next morning at the bus station.

Of course, we had to go back out to find food, which we thankfully did despite it being an ungodly late hour. We ate and slept hard!

The alarm went off at 7:00 as we were determined to be the first waiting in line at the bank to retrieve our card.

We dropped our suitcases off at the bus ticket office, telling them that we would be back. We got there at about 7:30 and sat outside the bank on the floor and waited.

Many people that walked by wondered what we were doing. It’s not common for people to be sitting on the floor in this building, let alone a couple of mazungos (foreigners.) One security guard came along and told us that we should be waiting outside the building. I refused to budge. After what we had been through, nobody was going to tell me where I could or couldn’t sit. I didn’t care how bad it looked. He gave up eventually as I’m sure he could see that we were in no mood for bullshit at that point.

Finally, the men arrived to work and proceeded to retrieve our card. They sort of laughed at me when I told them what happened. But after I told them the whole long story of how awful our night had been, one of them actually told me that he felt sorry for us. I felt satisfied at least getting some sympathy out of one of them.

After going into the back of the machine, they emerged with a literal STACK of cards. There must have been at least a dozen of them.

“It looks like that machine is a problem,” I told them. One man chuckled. Not surprisingly, a minute later, another lady showed up to also retrieve her card.

I couldn’t help but wonder how many people had their plans messed up that night.

Well, we got our card, walked back to the border, checked into the Zambia immigration, then walked back to the bus depot on the Tanzanian side (yes, this is how many of the borders are in Africa) and started the process of trying to find a bus that would honor our tickets to Lusaka. Of course, the man we had been dealing with the night before was nowhere to be found.

After a few different phone calls, and speaking to different men at different bus companies, two guys showed up and told us that they would escort us and our luggage to the Zambian side and would show us a bus that we could take.

Of course, they said it left at 11:00, but it didn’t leave until 1:00. We settled in for the 20-hour overnight ride, happy, at least, to be starting the next phase of our journey.

Thanks for reading! I should note that we normally don’t travel at such a harried pace! But this time in particular we were traveling to Botswana for a housesitting job and our schedule was really tight. It was likely the most grueling days of travel that we have endured yet, as after our 20 hour bus ride to Lusaka, we then, almost immediately, got on another 8 hour bus to Livingstone! By then, we were mere shells of human beings and we laughed at ourselves thinking that we thought we were tired at the Zambia border!

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Hi there, we are 2 Canadians, Jill and Chris from Artistic Voyages. We have been nomadic since 2017 living in numerous different countries, and experiencing the life and diversity of our planet on the ground and firsthand. We have now been on the African continent for 2 years! Join our adventure by hitting the links below!

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