The Great Escape

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  Kigoma, Tanzania
Friday, June 15, 2007

"You... pay...money."

Damn, it was bad English, but English nonetheless.  I was screwed.

Burundi had been a short stop, but a pleasant one.  Henriette's cousin, Bea, had graciously given me a spare bedroom in her house to sleep in, and was generally mothering me in anyway she could.  On the morning I left, she drove me to the bus station, and waited until I was in the bus before she left for work.

As per usual, the bus was already packed beyond capacity, but at least it was a mid-sized one, not a horrible little 12 seater that always sat far more than it was designed for.  I struggled in, managed to find a spare nine inches to squeeze my 12 inches of ass into, and sat down.  Immediately a stranger's child was put on my lap.  This is a constantly occurring phenomenon in Africa.  Child care is very communal.  It is common to see a child of five, carrying a baby sister on her back of two years old.  In Canada, NO ONE would ever casually place their child on a stranger's lap, in Africa, it was the norm.  She soon feel asleep and curled up as content as a cat in a sunbeam.

The road out of Bujumbura followed the coast of Lake Tanganyika.  On the left, mountains tumbled down to meet the lake, leaving a small strip of flat land for people and vehicles to stake their claim.  The coast was beautiful.  The water was clear and blue, and would lap up on deserted beaches that would not look out of place in a brochure advertising the Caribbean.  Other than the occasional wooden fisherman's boat, and the occasional cluster of mud brick houses, there was no development; million dollar views and five dollar huts.

After a couple of hours, the road began to wind slowly up, and up, into the mountains towards the border.  Soon we arrived at a little village with a lonely immigration office.

Here was the problem - when I arrived in Burundi I thought I could save a bit of money by buying a transit visa instead of a regular one.  I was only going to stay a few days, and I thought a week would be more than enough.  In fact, a week was more than enough, but the three day transit visa they gave me wasn't.  Whoops.

I wasn't worried.  Even though I was a day or two over, Bea's husband, a well connected man, had made some phone calls and talked to someone big in immigration.  They, in turn, had called the immigration office I was arriving at and had told them "let the muzungu go."  I was to ask for Erast, the officer who had been contacted, and everything would be fine. It was my ace in the hole.

I went into the office and sat down.  Two immigrant officers stared at me, then my passport.  "This is a transit visa.  It is expired" (in French).  A lot of French was then spoken, bad on my part, good on theirs.  I explained how I had looked for a boat and couldn't find one, that I loved the country, that the women were beautiful (usually good for a smile and a wink from African men), and how I was very sorry.  They kept coming back to the point that visa was expired.  This was a problem.

It was time for my ace-in-the-hole.  "Umm, je pense il n'y a pas une probleme.  Mon ami qui habite a Bujubura parler avec un ami qui travailler ici.  Est-ce que Erast ici?" (Umm, I think there is not a problem.  My friend who lives in Bujumbura to talk with a friend who to work here.  Is Erast here?)

"Erast? Il ne traville pas ici."  (Erast? He doesn't work here.)

Damn.

A lot more French was then spoken.  The upshot was (in French) "You pay money.  You understand?"

I played the Anglophone card.  "Non, je ne comprend pas." (No, I don't understand.)  Whoops, perfect French.

"You... pay... money."

"But I don't have a lot of money." (in French.  For sake of brevity, imagine the rest of this conversation in French.)

"You don't have money?" This was the source of huge mirth to the two officers. "You are a muzungu." (A white man)

"I only have enough money to get to Kigoma.  I'm a muzungu, but not a normal muzungu. I don't come to Africa for two weeks to do a safari.  I've been here for ten months.  I live with Africans." (This was my intended meaning, with my French, I was probably saying something entirely different like how much I liked making love to monkeys).

This caused even larger gales of laughter.  The guards spoke in Kirundi, and the word "muzungu" was tossed around a lot.

I was beat.

"Ok, how much?"

Five thousand francs.  This was about five dollars in American dollars.  It could have been worse.  I paid, and left.

The vast majority of the passengers had gotten off the bus in Mkambo, the border town.  The border itself was about another 10-12 kilometres away, and those of us heading there were transferred into a smaller mini-bus. I say "transferred", but "wedged" is probably a better word.  It was horrible, a tin can 12 seater.  We were wedged, with all of our luggage into this small space.  Twenty-six people were wedged into a space designed for no more than twelve (actually, 28 if you count the two people hanging off the outside of the bus.)  The pain was terrible.  Every arm pit and crevice was stuffed with children, old women, and huge balls of ugali wrapped in banana leaves.  The terrible road keep throwing everyone around, and my knee was shoved into a space just below the groin of the man across from me.  He watched it with a grim, stoic expression, waiting for the bump that would destroy any plans of a future family.

Finally the border came into sight.  I joined the queue, bought my visa, and waited for the mini-bus to fill up again.  We were three minutes into Tanzania when the tire blew.  Everyone piled out.  Our driver and conductor using a rock, a log, and tire iron replaced the blown tire with a spare that was even more worn and dilapidated than the one that had blown.

It was during this time that one of the Burundian women in the mini-bus propositioned me... I think. My French sometimes deserts me all together, and she might have been asking me to meet her parents.  She asked if I was married, I said no.  I asked if she was, she said "Not yet."

Tire fixed, everyone piled back in.  We drove to the closest town to the border on the Tanzanian side.  Here the driver decided we should add another six people to the bus.  He pulled open the door and it promptly fell off. However, nothing in Africa is ever truly broken, and after physically forcing the extra people into the bus, he jammed the door back on and away we went.  Frankly, everyone was so tightly packed, it would have been impossible to fall out anyway.

As the kilometers began to pass, the "Ass-in-Face" Tension Ratio finally boiled over.  One woman turned and started throwing punches into the people behind her, tired of the old man crouch shoved so firmly into her posterior.  Chaos ensued with shouting and screaming.  The bus rolled on, not stopping, as we inched ever closed to Kigoma, our destination for the day.

Finally, just before dark, we rolled into Kigoma.  The worst was over.

Was I ever wrong.

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