A bend in the border

"Land borders are not always straight." he said. "Sometimes there is a bend in the border." I was crossing the land border from Uganda to Rwanda in East Africa.

"Why are you crossing at this border?" she asked. I was driving back in my car from Montreal to Buffalo, where I was living. I was crossing the U.S. - Canada border at a remote border crossing in Vermont. It was a single lane road and the border was two flagpoles with the Canadian and U.S. flags on them.  A woman officer on the American side asked me to pull over. I was the only person at the border. I gave her my U.S. Green Card. "Where do you live?" she asked. I replied, "Buffalo."  "Why are you crossing at this border? You should be crossing the border at Niagara Falls," she said. "I want to drive through Syracuse," I said. "Why?" she enquired. "I am planning to apply for a doctoral programme and want to visit the University there," I said. Another car pulled up and stopped. She gave my Green Card back to me and said, "You can go." She walked across to the other car. There were two Arab men in the car. She asked them to get out of the car.

Anita Nair in her book, Goodnight and God Bless, writes, "I will shamelessly and with great interest eavesdrop in buses, trains, airplanes; in restaurants and at parties; on the street and in shopping malls; at phone booths and in banks." That's what I did. Eavesdrop. I walked around my car, pretending that I was checking the tyres. I took out my bottle of water and sipped water slowly. All the while, I eavesdropped. She asked the Arab men, "Where are you coming from?" "Where are you going?" They were Canadian citizens from Montreal visiting their friends in Vermont. She asked them to open the boot of the car. She suddenly exclaimed, "What's that?" 

She was pointing to a plastic box with small rectangular cubes in them. They said, "It's Lebanese halva (middle-eastern sweet)." She asked, "Why are you carrying so many boxes of them?" "We are carrying it for our friends. You don't get them in Vermont." She wasn't convinced, "Open the box and eat it." One of them opened one of the boxes and ate a halva in front of her. He then offered her one piece of halva. She ate it and said, "Wow! This is lovely!" "Would you be coming this way again?" she enquired. "Why?" they said. "Can you, please, get me one box of halva, the next time?" she said. Who would have thought that halva is an antidote to racial profiling?

I was racially profiled while crossing a border in East Africa. I was in Nairobi, Kenya and was travelling to Arusha in Tanzania. I had booked a seat in a minibus, the day before. They said that they would pick me up from my hotel at 7am. It was 7:30am and the bus hadn't yet come. It became 7:45am and there was no sign of the bus. At 8am, the receptionist of my hotel called up a number that they had given. The bus driver had apparently forgotten to pick me up. They sent a car to take me to the bus, which had now stopped and was waiting for me. I got into the bus and saw that all the passengers were white. I was the only non-white passenger. The bus reached the border and all the white passengers got their passports stamped within seconds. I was made to wait. They wanted to see my hotel bookings in Arusha. I showed it to them. They then wanted to see my flight tickets out of Tanzania. I showed them my return flight tickets to India. They stamped my passport after about fifteen minutes. I got into the bus that was waiting and noticed that some of the passengers were annoyed with me.

It was a different experience in Uganda. "I will pick you up at 4am." said the taxi driver. I was in a hotel on the banks of Lake Bunyonyi in Uganda and was trying to reach Kigali, the capital of Rwanda. Since I could not find any public transport, I found a taxi driver. He would take me from Lake Bunyonyi to Kabale. In Kabale, he would get me space in a pick-up truck that was going to Kigali. The pick-up truck would be leaving Kabale at 5am, hence he was picking me up at 4am. The road to Kabale was unpaved. Even the roads in Kabale town were unpaved. The taxi driver dropped me at 4:30am in front of a rundown building and said, "The pick-up truck will pick you at 5am." It was dark and there were no street lights. I waited in the dark. 

Promptly at 5am, an ancient Chevy pick-up truck came and stopped. A large man, wearing a thick gold chain, got down, shook hands with me and said, "I am Lionel." He said, "I will drop you at your hotel in Kigali. I will charge you 35,000 Shillings ($9)." I sat down in the passenger seat of the cabin of the pick-up truck. The cabin was full of stacks of money. There were Ugandan shillings and Rwandan francs. There were sheafs of banknotes everywhere - in the side compartments, stuffed behind the sun visor and they were overflowing from the open glove compartment. Lionel cryptically said, "I do business." He drove to a warehouse and said, "I have to pick up newspapers." There were no printing presses in Rwanda and all the newspapers were printed in Uganda. Lionel took a stack of money and walked into the warehouse. He then loaded the cargo bed of the truck with stacks of newspapers printed in French. He filled up the entire cargo bed.

Lionel then stopped in front of a fruit vendor. He bought the entire stock of watermelons that the woman had. "Watermelons are more expensive in Rwanda," he explained. He stacked the watermelons on top of the newspapers. We reached the border and I got the Ugandan exit stamp. Ugandans and Rwandans did not need any passports to cross. So, Lionel just flashed his identification card. All of the Ugandan immigration officers knew him and smiled at him. "I cross this border every day," he explained. He then drove over to the Rwandan immigration office and parked. As I was walking across, I saw an Indian man. He walked over to me and asked in Hindi, "Do you have a visa?" I said, "Yes." "Do you have a valid visa?" he asked. Rwandan visas are valid for entry only after a date mentioned on the visa. I again said, "Yes." He said, partly in Hindi, "I don't have a valid visa." "What do you plan to do?" I enquired. He shrugged his shoulders and said, "I don't know. Let me see." 

I handed my passport with the visa to the immigration officer. She asked me to wait. Almost fifteen minutes passed, and I still hadn't gotten my passport back. Lionel came over and exclaimed, "They still haven't processed your visa!" He then went inside the immigration office and shouted at the officers in French. I got my passport back with the Rwandan entry stamp, in a few minutes. I was walking back to the parked truck and money changers approached me. Lionel shooed them away and told me, "I will change money for you. My rate is better than theirs." I changed my remaining Ugandan shillings to Rwandan francs. I then saw the Indian man from the Ugandan side walking. I asked him, "How did you manage to enter?" "Land borders are not always straight," he said, "Sometimes there is a bend in the border. I walked through the bend." Are immigration officers corrupt or do travellers make them corrupt?

Lionel then stopped for a customs check. Rwanda was the first country in the world to ban plastic. Any plastic found is confiscated at the borders. I had known about this and was not carrying any plastic. Or, so I thought. They went through my bags with a fine sieve. I keep my passport in a Ziploc bag to ensure that it stays waterproof. They pointed to the Ziploc bag and said, "What is this? This is plastic." They then confiscated my waterproof Ziploc bag. It reminded me of Malaysia. 

In the mid-1990's, I used to work and live in Singapore. I had crossed the border to Malaysia to travel to Taman Negara National Park. The only way to reach the national park is by canoe. I was in an open canoe when I got caught in a torrential downpour. My backpack, its contents and I got soaked. After reaching Taman Negara, I tried to dry my passport with a borrowed hair-dryer. It was then that I noticed that the ink on my Singapore visa had run off and it was illegible. How was I going to get back to Singapore? Would I have to go back to India? 

On my way back to Singapore, I handed in my passport to the Singapore immigration officer at the Johor Bahru border. I told him, "The visa is illegible." He thumbed through my still wet passport with the visa and said, "Give me your Employment Pass." It was a card like a driving licence. I handed it to him. He then entered my Employment Pass number on his computer and got all my details, including my picture. He allowed me to enter Singapore. "Get a new visa stamped," he said. Since then, I have always carried my passport in a waterproof Ziploc bag. 

Now the Ziploc bag had been confiscated by the Rwandan border guards. As we were driving away, Lionel saw that I was perturbed and said, "I will give you a plastic cover." He then produced one from under his seat and said, "Give me 1000 Rwandan francs ($1)!" Lionel then stopped in front of a Rwandan fruit vendor and unloaded all of his watermelons. He then proceeded to load the truck with Rwandan oranges. He said, "Oranges are expensive in Uganda."  Lionel then unloaded the newspapers in a small warehouse and dropped me at my hotel. I had reached Kigali. 

Have you had any interesting land border crossing experiences? If so, where?

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Have you read my previous blog, "New flower in Ethiopia"? Click on this link to read about my travels through northern Ethiopia: http://kodavarthi.blogspot.com/2020/12/new-flower-in-ethiopia.html?m=1

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