Illegal Immigrant....Almost

This Sunday I had a visit from my village children again, and to save them a two hour walk, I give them the 25 minute car ride back to the bottom of the mountain where they live. On our way, we saw my friend Francis coming from Sonrise and stopped to pick him up to accompany us on our ride. Francis is a math teacher and the Discipline Master at Sonrise School and has become a very dear friend to me here in Rwanda. The road to this mountain is also the road to Uganda, and since Francis is from Uganda, he kept telling me “you are taking me home”. After we dropped the boys off, Francis said the border was only a short distance away. Since I had never seen the Ugandan border, we decided to continue on our way so that I could even just for a moment experience Francis’ homeland. However, we had no passports, no visas….nothing with us. Francis was sure that he could get us through to simply step foot on Ugandan soil, as he knew some of the border patrol.

When we arrive at the Rwandan border, we enter Immigration to talk with Francis’ friend, Jane. She let us past Immigration and told us next to talk to Border Patrol. We get permission from the Border Patrol Manager, but he says we have to park my car and go on foot, in the rain. Next we have to sweet talk security into actually letting us through the border. In between the border of Rwanda and Uganda is a distance of about 30 meters that is called No-Man’s Land because it belongs to neither country. We walk through No-Man’s Land and almost reach the Ugandan border, and then Francis has second thoughts. He knew he could get himself through without a passport, but he thought the Ugandan border patrol might try to bribe me because of the color of my skin. I concede and decide it probably wasn’t the smartest idea of my life….to try to illegally enter a country in Africa with no identification (my dad is getting a little worried reading this right now:). So we take some pictures in No-Man’s Land next to the Ugandan welcome sign, chat with some of Francis’ friends who were money exchangers, and safely head back home. Next time I attempt to enter Uganda, I will do it legally. But it made for an entertaining, random adventure nonetheless.

Francis and I in "No-Man's Land" at the Ugandan Border....with the welcome sign in the background, trying not to get arrested:)