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They start over after all is lost in Africa
Driven from land in Zimbabwe, couple in their 50s seize opportunity in N.C.

Wally Herbst enjoys the view from the deck of his new home on the farm he recently started managing in Wilson County. The Herbsts came to North Carolina after losing their farm to a land redistribution program enforced with death threats.


Sitting at the kitchen table in the couple's apartment in Ayden, Helen remembers vividly what happened next. Two Mazda pickups, bristling with armed police, were waiting for her. Their leader snatched the gate's keys from the employee and turned to Helen.
"This is no longer your property. You have 24 hours to get out," he told her. If you don't, "we'll kill you or put you in jail, whichever you prefer."

It was not an idle threat. In 2000, war veterans killed a neighbor after he refused to leave his farm.

The Herbsts prided themselves on the relationships they formed with their black employees, many of whom worked with the family for years. The couple had provided a pre-school on the property for workers' children, and a free health clinic where mothers could take their babies. Wally had hoped that his family's longstanding ties to the area would spare his farm from seizure.

Frantic packing

In the end, it did not matter. With the help of neighbors and friends and their vehicles, the Herbsts were forced to pack up as much as they could. Police pilfered from the trucks as the woman who would be moving into their home gave demands.

The Herbsts were barred from removing anything needed to run the farm, including tractors. The farm would be turned over to a local politician, and his wife wanted some things inside the home as well.

This irritated Helen, who picked up a pottery vase her daughter Pam had made in school.

"I said, 'Do you want this?' and she said 'yes.' I drew my hand back, and I turned around and smashed it on the floor."

She laughs about it now, but Wally and Helen haven't been back home since. Pam, who lives less than 70 miles from the farm, hasn't returned, either. "To be honest, I don't know if I'd want to go back," she says on the phone from her home in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. "I'd rather have these pictures in my mind of how it looked when I left."

The Herbsts' son, John, returned soon after to tend to the cattle, only to be kidnapped and held for ransom at the farm.

The kidnappers had gained access to the Herbsts' bank records. They demanded exactly what the family had on deposit. Helen doesn't remember the precise figure, but it was millions of Zimbabwe dollars. It took Helen five trips with a suitcase to fill the back seat of her car with enough money to free their son.

Although she can retell almost the entire story without becoming emotional, Helen tears up when speaking of her three children, two of whom live in Zimbabwe. She is not sure when she will see them, or her grandchild, again, but Helen and Wally needed to leave.

It would not be fair, Helen says, to saddle the kids with parents who cannot make a living for themselves.

Starting over

The couple who helped bring the Herbsts to America, Tom and Bonnie Ellis of Raleigh, first visited Zimbabwe in the late 1980s. Tom, an avid hunter who has since retired from the state Department of Agriculture, had always wanted to track game in Africa.

A travel agent sent them to the Herbsts, and he hunted sable on the family's land.

The Ellises and the Herbsts became fast friends.

Tom and Bonnie have returned to Africa many times. After Wally and Helen were forced from their home, the Ellises treated the couple and their daughter Kelly to a Christmas trip to North Carolina.

Work in Africa dried up for Wally. Inflation climbed astronomically. A loaf of bread in Zimbabwe can cost more than $1 trillion Zimbabwe dollars.

The Herbsts decided to move abroad.

Says Wally: "Eventually, all our assets were gone, and we thought" -- clapping his hands for emphasis -- "let's try America."


Tom scouted for a job. He found one with Chuck Stokes, a farmer with thousands of pigs near Greenville.
Although Wally had broad experience with animals, he had never worked with pigs. At first, the physical labor wore him out. Add the fact that he had been his own boss for decades, and there were stressful moments.

With Tom's help, Wally learned to drive on the other side of the road than he was accustomed to. The Ellises helped the Herbsts navigate the red tape of auto-insurance rates, which treated them as brand-new, 16-year-old drivers.

Some of the adjustments were more subtle. When first arriving, Wally and Helen would sometimes stroll through stores and not buy anything. The abundance on the bread aisle alone was enough to make Wally smile. In Zimbabwe, the stores are bare.

At work, after managing so many people for so long, Wally found himself near the economy's bottom rung. He worked long hours doing manual labor, and it was tough on his body.

He wouldn't admit it, though, even as he lost 30 pounds. "I never got sore," he says.

Tom describes Wally as the kind of kind of tough African who would break his arm one day and get out and play rugby again the next.

A more honest answer about Wally's physical adjustment to his American workload comes from Helen. She gently teases him about the pain and soreness he felt at the beginning. She says he dragged himself into the apartment at the end of each day. After he sat down, she would stoop to help him remove his boots.

Climbing the ladder

In early August, things started to look up for Wally and Helen, even after he thought he might lose his job.

His boss told him about a possible downturn in the pig business and said it would be OK if he looked around for other work. With Tom's help, he quickly had an interview with a Wilson County farmer who needed someone to oversee a pig and cattle operation. Wally's visa is specifically designed for workers with specialized occupations. His decades in agriculture are what qualified him for it, and he will need to remain in farming to stay in America.

He got the job.

The couple moved to a rent-free apartment on the farm. Wally oversees a handful of employees, which makes him feel better about his place on the American-dream ladder.

They still don't have much money. From time to time the Ellises give financial help, which Helen works to repay.

"Without the Ellises, I don't know what we would do," Helen says.

Tom says they're family. "They just needed a helping hand, and we could provide it, so we did."

Their new apartment is not large, but has a deck with a sliding glass door that overlooks a pasture where cows graze. The space is open and airy, a distinction from the cramped apartment on a busy street in Ayden. Helen says she feels more at home here.

Pam says she can feel it halfway across the world. Her mom and dad seem happier.

"It's shades of Africa again," she says.

Wally is here on a three-year visa that's renewable for another three years. After that, if an employer is willing to sponsor him, he might apply for a green card. But that's in the future.

Some days Wally talks about green cards and staying in America. On others, he speaks of retiring to Zimbabwe, where the U.S. dollar can be stretched nearly beyond imagination. He figures that with $36,000, he and Helen would have a very good start on retirement there.

On a late afternoon in September, Wally and Helen are sitting on the couch in their new apartment at the end of the workday. Just over their shoulders, on the deck outside, is the standard American-issue gas grill. With their children's wedding pictures on the walls and a newly adopted kitten poking its head out from behind the stove, it is a comfortable, homey place.

Helen misses her children. Maybe Pam and her husband will be able to visit for Christmas 2009. That distance, she says, is her only regret in this adventure.

Wally and Helen landed at Raleigh-Durham airport on Sept. 20, 2007. They arrived with round-trip tickets, the second half of which recently expired.

They miss home, but right now, America is where they belong. Where there is work, there is opportunity.

Here, they can get ahead.

"It's strange at our age," Helen says. "We should be settled and have everything, and we're starting again. But it's going really, really well. It really is an American dream."