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written on sunday, may 4

i’ve been in arua for 5 days and have another 6 days to go before i go home to kampala. most of my time has been work, work, work but i was feeling pretty jealous that phil was spending a weekend in murchison with friends - and seeing 9 lion cubs, 9! - that i decided i needed my own adventure. so, i went to congo. yep, the country famous as the “heart of darkness.” the border’s maybe a 30 minute drive from arua, about 12 miles. we (me and my driver, atiku) arrived at 4:30, i crossed the border just before 5, and at 5:30 i was back in uganda. short trip, but still. i went to congo.

rose, the ugandan immigration officer at vurra customs, stamped my exit and re-entry from uganda so i have documentation of the trip, but sadly no congolese stamp. atiku couldn’t come with me and i can’t take the car across the border, so i was on foot. turns out the congolese checkpoint is 6 km across the border…long walk. besides, rose warned me that they wouldn’t stamp my passport anyway because i didn’t have a visa and i couldn’t buy one there. i asked her what i’d do if got to their checkpoint and they found out i didn’t have a congolese visa; she said she didn’t know. would i be able to leave and get back into uganda? she didn’t know that either. so i settled on walking about 500 meters into the country and leaving the official passport stamp for another time.

i got my uganda exit stamp and went to the ugandan police station to officially register for exiting. i asked if there’d be any issues with me just going across the border and walking for a bit. he didn’t think so but then again the congolese built a new security building replete with police and an official gate that started operating some days ago, so he didn’t know what kind of “security” they were running nowadays. maybe they’d “harrass” me on that side, he said, but then “you just come back to our side.” uhhh, if they’re harrassing me, doesn’t that imply that i can’t just come back to this side? i really started to question my decision to go over when he reminded me that they only speak french, swahili, or the local language. strike one, two, three for me on the ability to communicate. but, then i figured, i’m only going 500 m and will be within spitting distance of uganda the entire time. so i got practical and found a volunteer ugandan who’d walk with me as my personal guide (and translator).

it was no big shakes, just a stroll down a dirt road connecting uganda and congo in the middle of farmland. joshua and i chatted some, a woman selling g-nuts walked with us. there was an invisible line where the ugandan police were no longer aware of us and the congolese police were, at which point a group of 4-5 congolese policemen came to inspect the mzungu. i am comfortable with african police/military casually carrying machine guns when they’re ugandan. i know how to communicate, i know what to expect. but, police in blue uniforms saying democratique republic de congo (or whatever the french is) speaking an unfamiliar language and suddenly i don’t feel so savvy. especially when they surround me and my travel companions in a tight circle. turns out they just wanted to know why in the world a white woman was choosing to walk and not drive. our g-nut seller got them to laughing and i quickly felt no threat. then ngobera asked me my name in halting english, and i asked his, then what his name meant (”place of much money”) and i had a new friend. (one particular congo policeman could have easily been typecast in hollywood as an african guerrilla fighter. the image was somewhat tainted by the yellow plastic kids sunglasses he wore, but then it was recovered by the menacing glare he gave me over the top rim of the glasses. i was happy that i had ngobera on my side.)

i passed the official “welcome to democratic republic of congo” sign, but i never did see the new security building or gate.

i bought a mirinda orange soda at a small stand next to the bicycle/boda stage, so at least i contributed to the congolese economy. then i crossed back into uganda, completed the police registration handwritten ledger where kabagambe (the policeman) simultaneously grilled me about the purpose of my visit to congo and asked me for my phone number in kampala and the u.s., got my re-entry stamp from rose, and was on my way back to arua.