More Reality Sinking In...

(Written on Wednesday)

Today was a strange and unsettling day.

It started this morning when Rico and I were having coffee and guava cereal bars for breakfast. I took two sips of my coffee, felt my stomach bubble and groan, and promptly ran for the bathroom gagging the entire length of the hallway. I'm not the kind of person that vomits easily, and while coffee has the tendency to upset my stomach I've never had a reaction like this before. After throwing up I felt instantly better and started to go about my day as usual, reading blogs and celebrity gossip, looking over a business plan, checking my schedule.

About half an hour later Rico got a call from our colleague B. in Chimoio. "What?? Are you serious? How did it happen?" From the intonation of Rico's voice I knew it wasn't good news.

"Caralho, que sinistro cara." Holy shit, how sinister. Rico looked at me across the table with wide eyes, shaking his head in disbelief. "You're sure this really happened? God. I don't know what to say..."

Rico hung up with B. and broke the news. "Rob Dawson was killed in a car accident last night driving back to Sussundenga."

I felt like someone had thrown a brick into my stomach. Rob Dawson was a client of ours, and his project was one of the first for which Agrolink successfully raised funds about 2 years ago. I met Rob a few times while living in Chimoio but didn't know him well by any means. He was a tall thin Zimbabwean with scraggly hair and a long beard, one of the white farmers that came to Manica Province after losing his commercial farm to Mugabe's land reform program.

Perhaps a reflection of this displacement, Rob always struck me as a person who was eternally struggling - to adapt to a foreign culture and country, to make ends meet, to basically pick up and start fresh at age 55 without being consumed by rage and remorse over the hand that life had dealt him. I also got the impression that Rob's main ally in many of these struggles was a good strong whisky, sipped with a stoic face as to never hint at the pain he was trying to drown.

Along with his brother and another Zimbabwean farmer, Rob set up a flower production project outside Chimoio for which we raised several hundred thousand dollars in grant funding. When it came time to pay the company's consulting fee, however, problems arose. Rob and his partners refused to honor the amount originally agreed upon for our compensation, saying that it was too high for the services provided. Instead, Rob offered to pay us 20% of the originally determined consulting fee. I don't know if he truly thought our services weren't worth that much, or if Rob was just broke and wanting to save face. Either way, Ricardo rejected his offer and so began a dispute that would last for nearly 2 years...

Up until a few months ago, Ricardo had refused to accept any payment from Rob Dawson that weren't for the full amount owed. We were working on other projects and had other (paying) clients to dedicate our time and energy towards. Ricardo figured that when things slowed down, the company would approach Rob again and either find a solution or take him to court to enforce our agreement.

But then all the uncertainty and the shareholder fights within the company started, and we found ourselves with some cash flow problems. To tide us over, Ricardo approached Rob Dawson once again to discuss the matter of our payment. This time, Ricardo reasoned that any payment was better than no payment, and that once the company covered its expenses for the month we would start haggling again with Rob for the full payment.

The only problem was that now Rob was actively avoiding any payment, even a partial one. Ricard would call Rob just about every day to try and arrange a payment, and each time the guy would come up with some excuse as to why it wouldn't be possible. Either his car was broken, or the month's installment of the grant funds we'd raised for his project hadn't been deposited yet, or he was out of town, or he simply would avoid Ricardo's calls. This runaround lasted for over a month, then last Thursday Rob finally went by our Chimoio office and dropped off a check with B. for the partial amount owed.

We couldn't believe it! B. deposited the check in the company account and we were told that we'd have to wait 3 or 4 business days for it to clear. Then this morning, not a week after finally receiving our payment, B. received the news that Rob had been killed in a car accident as he drove home to his farm last night along the dirt road that links Chimoio with Sussundenga, a small village in the middle of the bush.

Apparently, Rob has been at a friend's house to have dinner and discuss the state of his business. According to this person, Rob was really agitated and nervous, talking about how he was having problems with his project, how the bank was giving him grief, and that he was even considering leaving the country. Rob also mentioned that he needed to speak with Ricardo, about what we will never know.

On the way home from the friend's house, Rob's car hit a tree along an isolated stretch of the road. He managed to get out of the vehicle after the accident, walked about 20 meters towards a grassy patch, they laid down and covered himself with vegetation for protection from the cold night. Rob passed away a few hours later. The next morning some local villagers found his body, and the news began to travel through the close-knit farming community in Chimoio.

After Ricardo finished telling me the story, we both sat at our desks in silence for several minutes, wrapping our minds around the sudden and unfortunate nature of Rob's death. With a slightly sheepish look on his face, Ricardo wondered out loud, "So do you think his check will clear?"

"I think so," I answered. "Why would he pay if he didn't have the money in his account to back up the check?"

"I don't know. Maybe that was what he wanted to talk to us about, to let us know that the payment wouldn't come through?"

"Who knows. I guess we'll find out soon enough."

What an awful situation. On the one hand, we were touched by the sad news of Rob's death and reminded that it could have been any of us on that dirt road at night. How many times, on road trips through isolated areas of Mozambique, have I not contemplated death myself, accepting the fact that if an accident happened we wouldn't be able to reach a hospital and would likely die in the middle of nowhere. On the other hand, Rob's money would bring a much-needed cushion to our company's cash flow. Ricardo and I discussed the palpable guilt we each felt waiting for a dead man's check to clear, as if in the face of this tragedy money should cease to matter at all...

B. called and was apparently thinking about the same thing. "Look on the bright side," he said. "If Rob's check bounces we can always tape it on the wall and put a sign underneath that says 'The first client that gave us a bad check died one day later.'"

Ricardo and I groaned at B.'s cynical take on the situation, permitting ourselves a quick laugh to relieve some of the tension caused by waiting for a dead man's money. At least B. found a way to deal with Rob's death - black humor. Sometimes I wish I could do the same, just make a cynical joke and move on with life, but I'm just not made that way. Even though I didn't know Rob very well at all, I feel so touched by his death. I can't stop thinking about it, imagining him on the side of the road, wondering what was going through his mind in those cold hours alone. Did he know death was coming? Was he in pain? Did he make amends and find peace with himself?

I can't help but think my early morning vomiting session was somehow related to this news...

(Update: Yesterday Ricardo went to the bank and found out that Rob Dawson's check cleared. Despite having solved our cash flow problem, I still feel horribly unsettled.)