Leaving Kabale...feels like leaving home for the first time. Even the bouncer at Match and Mix greets me like I am any other local going for a drink. The Dj plays all my favourite songs, the Indian at royal supermarket knows what brand of cigarettes I smoke and has them on the counter before I can even ask. If I quit smoking I fear he may not recognise me.
On the Jaguar bus to the Katuna border I pass by 7 pairs of the famous Ugandan crane. Uganda’s national emblem. 7 pairs! Unbelievable! I have only seen 2 cranes in all my time in the country and now here I am hooping towards Rwanda and I see 7 pairs out my window in the fields. Interesting to note that the Ugandan Crane seems to always be in pairs I wonder if they mate for life? A husband and wife team searching for food to feed their offspring. Whatever their reason for being together they serve to me as a reminder of my exceptional loneliness. A slap in the face of my singleness and as I pass each happy couple I think of all the time and travel I enjoy alone and think how nice it would be to have someone special to share these things with. Where is my crane?
Sitting at the Katuna border waiting for a thorough bag check from security before the bus and myself can pass into Rwanda takes so much time. Time is irrelevant remember. I repeat this to myself like a mantra and hope that the security is as thorough as it appears. With the bomb blasts and the bomb threats in Kampala I have this fear building up inside me because bad things can happen anywhere at anytime. I promised my sister I would be safe. Safe from Somali militants, attacking Uganda. For what? Why do they hate us? Because we support the current government and we won’t pull of peacekeepingt troops out? Should we? I don’t know enough about it. Eventually we pass through the border and my passport is stamped after a brief argument with the border security because I didn’t apply on line when I should have. I give him $60 US Dollars and he stamps the passport and lets me through.
The difference between Rwanda and Uganda is staggering. On one side everyone is speaking English and driving on the left hand side of the road and then on the other no one can understand me and drives on the other side. In a space of 100 metres I have passed from something I know so well into Rwanda, the unknown. How on earth am I going to negotiate my way through all this? When i get off the bus I see a muyaye sitting at the bus park, he looks like a Makiga, with all those little differences he stands out in the crowd. I try my luck...”Agandi ssebo” I say. He looks taken aback and then smiles warmly and replies in Rukiga. Ah! I am saved! I didn’t get his name but I slipped him 2000 Ugandan shillings and he began the mission of finding me accommodation nearby. Most places were full or ridiculously expensive, so he takes me to a place next to the taxi park and assures me I will be safe here. We obviously have different ideas of being safe, but seeing as he is Ugandan I trust his judgement. We farewell each other in Kiswahili and I am left, alone here, is this place.
I hide in my room for an hour recuperating, still hungover from a big night of drinking in Kabale and tired from the bus ride. By then I realise I am hungry. Great. I should have brought some food with me. Lucky for me the woman at the restaurant below speaks Swahili so I order the only thing I know how to ask for in Swahili, grilled beef and chips and a coke. I hear a man next to me speaking in English and it sounds like Ugandan English so I greet him in Luganda. He asked me to join him for a drink so I did, by now my food came, it was only a little serving of food but I shared it with him grateful for the opportunity to speak in English. After a short time he explains that he is calling me mami because he loves me and wants to share my room for the night. As politely as I can I tell him I have a “boyfriend” and I am a faithful “girlfriend”, so what if my man is imaginary? Does he really need to know that? I am so tired and really unnerved at this point that I just want to go to sleep, well shower first and then sleep that I manage to excuse myself. He tells me that he will meet me a 7am and take me to the genocide museum and then escort me to the bus that will take me to Kabale. I agree to meet him in the morning and retire to my room. The shower was just a funny experience. I couldn’t stop laughing as I was cowering, crouched on the floor trying to wash under a broken tap in a small room with no real door, hoping no one would look in through the “door” and also that no one would look in through the window that was large and opened out onto the main road. Awesome. The only allowed place to smoke happened to be at the petrol station next door. Yes, that’s right, the petrol station. It turns out that the traveller lodge next to taxi park is actually a hotel for men to sleep with prostitutes. The groans all night and the shelf in the room containing opened, used and unopened condoms confirmed my suspicions. No wonder this place was so cheap and no wonder people looked really confused when they saw me there. And the mattress was plastic, usually a giveaway. Who wants to sleep on a cum-stained mattress?
In the morning I am up early and try not to open the door too fast as it makes the most awful screeching sound when you do. I wash the same way and pack my things and head downstairs to my awaiting (apparently)escort to Rwanda. He is not there. I read my book of Kenyan stories and wait for 45 minutes. He probably is fast asleep, drained after spending the night with a Rwandan prostitute. I leave. So I’m sitting in a little cafe drinking really bad tea and thinking to myself, “well, what now?” I don’t speak Kiswahili or French and there seems to be little hope of finding an English speaker around. A young man walks in and in slow English tries to order tea. Ahhh Ugandans! What would I do without you? His name is John and he seems really pleasant and not like he is trying to get into my pants. He offers to take me to the memorials and to the city for the morning.
We walk around the genocide memorials and leave with heavy hearts and sick stomachs. Neither of us feels like eating. Or talking. The bus leaves at 11.30am...time for a beer. A ridiculous amount of beer later I staggered out of the bar and down to the bus. Taking my seat I had to ask maybe 6 times “is this the bus to the Katuna border and does it stop in Kabale?” A young mother and her three children try to squeeze into the two seats next to me, resulting in one of them falling asleep on my lap. I don’t mind of course it almost kicks in some kind of primal, maternal instinct inside my stomach making me think about having one of my own. Then my thigh gets really warm and I realise the kid has peed all over me. Maternal instincts gone. I sit for the next hour soaked in urine with the kid still asleep on my lap. Pleasant. Crossing the border back into Uganda is much easier and quicker, thankfully they give me three more months in Uganda. The young mother can’t deal with the paperwork and the children at the same time so she gives them to me to walk across the border with. Everyone was staring at me with a look of confusion. “Is that mzungu smuggling children into Uganda? Like seriously it looked like I went to Rwanda to steal children. At least I was left alone by the money exchange guys, who, for a change seemed to be a touch puzzled to approach me. Score. Back on the bus time seems to pass in an astonishingly speedy manner and all of a sudden (in what seemed like five minutes) I was back in Kabale. I raced back to the home to have a shower and change out of my skirt which was starting to get that old urine smell that comes from pee drying uncomfortably in the heat of the midday sun beating in through the bus window. Relieved to be back in Uganda and more so back in Kabale town I could relax and narrate my adventure to the other volunteers and my local friends. Kacumbe is there and once I’m all clean and have had a cup of tea and a cigarette I tickled him for ages while he screamed and tried to run away. Bakiga are so much fun to tickle, I am yet to meet a man from the tribe who isn’t more ticklish than a four year old girl. Having fun like this with such a good old friend makes me feel at peace with the world, the adventures of the past two days fade away into a seemingly distant memory as life resumes as normal for me. Rwanda? What Rwanda?
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