Nathan VanderKlippe
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Nov 22/02) - Somewhere in a house in Harare, Zimbabwe, a man is waiting for Canada to give him a chance.

Clinging to the $21,000 he needs to cross the Atlantic and mourning the life that was ripped from him after he supported a political party pushing democratic change, Jim Taylor might never make it to Canada. He might be killed before the money and the paperwork come through.

But his wife and daughter, both in Yellowknife, are fighting for the $7,000 they needs to sponsor Jim's coming to Canada.

They're also fighting their own memories.

"You can't even sleep at night without seeing all the faces lined up with weapons, ready to cut down the fences and attack you," says Lynda Taylor, Jim's daughter.

She came to Canada a little over two years ago. It took her eight months before she could talk about the circumstances that had driven her from an expansive 4,300-acre farm.

She left behind 1,500-piece puzzles of the great African animals: buffalo, elephant, leopard, lion and rhino. She left behind her three dogs, and the seven staff at the store she built to provision five farms in the area. She left behind the Insingisi Farm that her great-grandfather founded in 1932, and which employed as many as 800 local labourers in the busy season.

But she also left behind a country where Prime Minister Robert Mugabe, an international pariah for his human rights record, and his Zanu PF party have created exiles out of numerous wealthy white farmers under an ambitious -- the Taylors call it "terrorist" -- plan to reclaim Zimbabwean land for black Zimbabweans.

Neighbour killed

Lynda remembers when Martin Olds, a neighbouring farmer, was killed. Olds had sent his family into town when a mob began to approach the homestead. As he tried to defend the farm, the mob gunned him down.

Another time, an elderly woman was walking to her front gate with her two dogs when she was shot down. Doctors recovered 15 bullets from her body.

"It was an elderly lady who didn't do nothing wrong except for the fact that her skin was the wrong colour," says Lynda.

Lynda, Alrene and Lynda's six-year-old daughter Olivia escaped Zimbabwe in April 2000, exchanging 23 degree sunshine for - 23 C cold in Yellowknife, where Lynda's brother lived. It was the first time they had seen snow.

Marked man

Jim was forced off the farm in early September. He has been a marked man since his brother-in-law held a meeting for the Movement for Democratic Change on their farm a couple of years ago.

That party was crushed in a recent election that many observers said was rigged, and the Taylors say MDC supporters have since been denied health care and put at risk for their lives.

Lynda now works at Borealis Pet Specialties in Yellowknife. Her mother, Alrene, worked for two years at McDonald's before developing such severe carpal tunnel syndrome that she was forced to go on disability assistance.

Now Alrene, formerly a farm-owner, problem-solver and grandmother to many of her workers in Zimbabwe, carries her groceries home in an old Winnie the Pooh backpack.

They haven't owned a car since they arrived in Yellowknife.

"We have had to start from scratch, literally," said Lynda.

But they want their family back together, and to do it Lynda has to prove to the government that she has a sufficient financial base to support Jim. Holy Trinity Anglican church has stepped in to help, and is accepting donations on their behalf.

Even if she can prove her capital worth, it will still be eight weeks before her application is approved, and at least another six before Jim can complete his requirements from Africa.

Until then, it's a tense waiting game, since Jim's life could quite simply be hanging in the balance.

"We just need to be together as a family," said Alrene. "Because we've gone through sheer hell."