Driven from home, Zimbabwe couple finds hope in N.C.

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AYDEN, North Carolina -- In Zimbabwe, Wally Herbst would have left this kind of dirty work to his hired hands.Now in North Carolina -- stripped of his vast African ranch and starting over at 58 -- his only hands are his own. So he bends to his filthy task, the removal of a bloated, dead pig that weighs more than 200 pounds, its stink thickening in the humidity. He ties a simple knot with a piece of rope -- a "bit of African technology," he says -- and pulls a loop tight around the pig's hind legs. Using a 4-foot board as a ramp, Herbst yanks the carcass into the bed of a pickup.In Africa, Herbst worked a 13,000-acre farm, part of which had been in his family for generations. He grew paprika that was exported to Spain, ran a successful safari business, raised cattle and employed more than 150 people during the busy harvest seasons. That life ended in 2002 when men armed with automatic weapons evicted the Herbst family from its farm. In a land redistribution campaign overseen by President Robert Mugabe, political loyalists seized thousands of white-owned farms in Zimbabwe and turned them over to impoverished blacks. The seizures wrecked the country's agricultural infrastructure, leading to extensive food shortages and stratospheric inflation. The United Nations estimates that 1 million people have lost their livelihoods and homes as a result of the redistribution. Herbst and his wife, Helen, are among them. Theirs is a refugee story turned upside down.They were not poor political dissidents, but successful farmers whose skin color and economic achievement made them vulnerable in a violent, hostile environment. At an age when most couples are spoiling their grandchildren and mapping retirement plans, the Herbsts packed four suitcases for a chance at the American dream. In Africa, the couple lived among giraffes and elephants, and hunters from overseas paid big money for the right to hunt sable antelope on their land.Nearly broke when they arrived a year ago, the Herbsts want to save money so they can eventually retire. Wally secured a visa and a job with a large hog operation.. It's grunt work, but he does not complain. Wally is built like a middle linebacker, with a strong-willed attitude to match. His wife Helen, 53, has the red hair and fair complexion of her Irish ancestors, and she is the chatty one Chaos and violence has defined Mugabe's 28-year presidential reign. In the 1980s, he dispatched troops to attack a rival tribe in a campaign that became known as the Matabeleland atrocities. By 1997, Mugabe announced his plan to seize white farms and redistribute the land. Five years later, Wally and Helen were forced out of their farm by armed police. Wally and Helen haven't been back home since The Herbsts' son, John, returned soon after to tend to the cattle, only to be kidnapped and eventually released after the Herbsts paid a ransom. The couple who helped bring the Herbsts to the United States, Tom and Bonnie Ellis of Raleigh, N.C., befriended the Herbsts on a hunting trip to Africa. After they 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." (Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)