I love crossing a border overland, to physically walk across a bridge or a river and so I was looking forward to seeing what it was like at the Uganda Rwanda border.
The Jaguar bus stopped an hour or so after leaving Kibale and we were told to get off.
The diver shouted ‘border!’ and we all got off with our bags. At first I was unsure where to go because there were no signs.
Others seemed to know the drill and I followed them to a small police office and waited for almost no time time at all for the officer to check my East African visa and stamp my passport.
Then I had to walk along a very dusty road with pools of mud over a small brook which forms the border of the two countries.
It was a mere trickle of water with farmland on each side and as far as I could see it would be very easy to walk into the farmland and then jump across it. It was one of the most insecure borders I have ever crossed.
All along the sides of the road we walked down to get to Rwanda were lorries. Apparently they can languish here for days just waiting to be processed. There were certainly plenty on the two occassions I was there and none of them looked like they were going to move any time soon.
If I had thought the Ugandan immigration office was unimpressive, then the Rwandan one was even more underwhelming. It was just a tin structure painted green.
The customs office was just a table under a green roof, no walls at all and with cheerful welcoming customs officers. All along the road were ramshackle shed selling food and other supplies. I imagine their main customers are the dozens of lorry drivers stranded there.
I was thirsty but trying not to drink anything – there were no toilets on the bus and very few stops – only three stops in 12 hours. Dehydration was the only solution.
At the border I got into an altercation with another passenger on my bus. He had spotted me waiting outside the bus for clearance to get back on and came and asked me for money –
“Muzungu give me money”. He was about 19 or 20 years old, tall and lanky with some friends. I asked him why I should give him money just because I was white. He didn’t know how to respond but just asked me again.
As the argument progressed, another passenger asked what was going on and I explained that he was being racist to me and was no better than a beggar.
At that point, he and other passengers turned on the young man and tried to make him apologise to me and called him a racist too. He didn’t apologise but looked very awkward and I hope he think again about begging money from someone merely because they have white skin (I doubt it though). How many muzungu actually give moeny to these people?
That’s one thing I really dislike about East Africa – the amount of people who come up to you asking for money, men, women and children.
And they only do it because I am white.
This is not something I’m used to in China. There are beggars but they don’t harass you – just ask you for money.
In East Africa it’s seemingly non-beggars who beg from you – just regular people going about their daily business and then see you, come up and ask for me. Makes me furious.