Imagine yourself walking. It's the middle of the night and a man approaches you. He wants to exchange shillings for francs. Getting that gut feeling that something's not right, you walk away. After filling out a departure form and collecting one more stamp in your passport, officials tell you to walk across the border. Yup. Walk. That was tonight.
We walked across the border with our passports in hand, and our valuables strapped to our backs. Men... I'm not sure why they hang out in no man's land between Uganda and Rwanda... were checking out all of the mzungu girls out as we walked across, and one guard even tried to convince my friend to stay the night there.... Um, fakegagement ring? Yes please.
We finally made it across and one of our professors told us to stick together... as in, literally be shoulder to shoulder as we made it to the arrivals booth to have our passports stamped again. Apparently Rwandans have no concept of "no cutting in line" and literally try to push through you to be next in line. After talking to the border patrol officer, the man asked if all of the mzungus were in the same group... and then asked us all to put our names and citizenship on a piece of paper. (As in a sheet of printer paper. So official, and so sketchy. Just like the rest of the night.
When we finally made it through the border (including the one member of our group who forgot his passport), we waited FOREVER for our bus to make it through the border, and finally walked down to meet it. Turns out, border patrol not only wanted to check one or two of our bags, but decided that they should check every person's bags (this wasn't typical according to the veterans).
Apparently in Uganda, plastic bags are forbidden. They literally confiscated them from people's bags, so I quickly tried to review in my mind what I had zipped up in plastic bags. When the man got to my bags, he pulled out my toothbrush and toothpaste. As you can guess, they were conveniently zipped up in a Ziploc bag.
Border Patrol Man: Is this necessary?
Me: No, just allow me to remove my toothbrush from the bag, and you can take the bag.
Border Patrol Man: (In a 'you're a young, pretty mzungu girl' tone) It's okay, you're my friend.
Hit on again, but whatever... I didn't have to throw away my toothbrush, so WIN. I thought to myself, "I promise not to leave any plastic in your country, just let me get back on the bus."
Then Border Patrol Man opened up another zipper in my backpack, which was full of biscuit wrappers. Let's backtrack a little bit. I've struggled to find anything that I would consider a great "treat" here in Uganda, so when I knew that we'd need road trip snacks, I resorted to purchasing the big box of 108 individually wrapped biscuits, because I knew that I would eat them, and that they would travel well. As a result, this is what I ate all day when other food wasn't available. There wasn't a rubbish (garbage) on our bus, so I just stuffed them all in this pocket in my backpack.
Border Patrol Man: You like biscuits?
Me: Yeah, they are the only thing that I've had to eat today.
Border Patrol Man: (continues to look through all of the wrappers)
Border Patrol Man: You have a healthy appetite...
Not sure if that was a fat joke or what, but he finally let me go, and didn't even make me throw away the wrappers, when it actually would have been useful. Apparently my "healthy appetite" for biscuits hasn't destroyed my girlish figure yet!
After another border patrol officers checked our passports AGAIN, and rode on our bus with us until we made it down the road, we were finally in Rwanda.
I tried to imagine the wounds that might still exist in Rwanda. What people still suffered? What heartbreak was still felt? What fields that we passed now function as graveyards? I can never know for sure, but I tried to let myself imagine- and I thought that there must still be significant wounds in the hearts of the Rwandan people.
However, when we pulled into Kigali, I noticed some things that I hadn't seen since I left the Salt Lake City airport- namely, sidewalks and streetlights. I was astonished. Compared to Uganda, there is all sorts of development taking place (at least at first glance). Our professor told us that after the genocide, the international community threw a lot of money at the Rwandan government, and this contributed to the development that has taken place. It's just too bad that there wasn't more intervention from the international community during the genocide.
As is typical with most large group endeavors, something went wrong. In this case, when we got to Kigali, nobody knew where we were going. The GPS wasn't working, street signs are really few and far between in Africa, and so we pulled over. At this point, our driver Tamil (a total champ) who had driven for probably 16-17 straight hours at this point came to sit by me... and started falling asleep in my general direction. Therefore, I fell asleep, but instead I laid my pillow on my lap and leaned over so that I didn't have to cuddle with Tamil. . .
In the meantime, our new driver and Dan hired a boda driver to direct us to our accommodations. The boda guy heartily accepted the job, but then also had no clue where he was going either... nice. He took us up these steep hills (Kigali has a ton of them), and clearly was guessing towards the end. Of course, he expected payment, and not a one of us had any Rwandan francs. Ugandan shillings were totally useless to him, but do you know what he was happy to take? That's right, American dollars.
Someone finally got a hold of the hotel manager who drove to us and let him follow us back. So tonight at the hotel... I sit on my roll away bed. As in, the type that falls in half anytime I move wrong... Should be an interesting night. Night y'all!
p.s. We also passed the Equator today!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment