Kigali

After another long flight we arrived in the Entebbe airport in Uganda, now in the US as you know this is a very simple process, not so in Uganda. First we had to wait in a long line, where Henry, the airport guy, wrote down everybody’s name and passport number, then he had to escort the whole group up past another security guard, then he took all of our passports to get our boarding passes, while this whole group of people sat and waited that Henry did not abscond with all of our passports. The process of changing planes took two hours, things are a little different here in Africa.

Another short flight and we were at our first destination, Kigali, Rwanda. Getting thought customs and immigration was a breeze here, the only problem, nobody was there again to pick us up.

As Lou and I stepped out of the airport a guy stuck a knife against my back and stole all of our money. He was going to kidnap us but he said I was too ugly. Ha Ha, that was for all of you who thought this was a dangerous place..

Really, we found a cab and started towards the Hotel Serena. Driving through Kigali I felt like Casper the friendly ghost in a chocolate factory. We were the only white people that I saw until we got to the hotel were there was one other couple in the restaurant. Lou and I had a little wine and hit the sack.

This morning we started out for Uganda. Moses our guide met us in the lobby and off we went, passing the Hotel Rwanda as we went. Kigali has come a long way since 1994 when the Hutu’s killed over a million Tutsis. Moses was telling me that when the genocide started the Hutus would just throw the bodies into the river and they would float over to Uganda.

The Rwandan countryside is beautiful, lots of rice paddies, sugar cane and tea fields. Lots of people walking along the road carrying everything imaginable, sticks, beans, rice, etc, on their heads. Every so often the children would cry out “muzungu” which means “white passing” or "I just saw Casper the ghost".

As we hit the Rwanda/Ugandan border we walked across while Moses did the vehicle paper work. As we were waiting for him I pulled out my camera and started taking some pictures. All of the sudden one of the guards looked at me and yelled out “Hey you come here.” When I walked over to him he wanted to know who had given me permission to take pictures of the border crossing. I told him no one and he said I was in trouble and they were probably going to confiscate my camera and I need to follow him to his commander. So off we went, as he chastised me along the way, “Who do you think you are taking pictures?” “Where are you from?” “Do they allow you to just take pictures in the US without permission?” He lead me into a small office where his commander sat behind a small desk. He saluted the man and proceeded to tell him that I had been caught taking pictures without permission. The commander looked at him and they both broke out laughing. So I traveled 6000 miles to have someone finally pull a practical joke on the practical jokester. We all had a good laugh but I decided to put the camera away.