Road trip to Kigali!!

The journey itself is freakin bullshitty, depending on how you get there, lets use the bus scenario.

Time check, well, there is no more time check, these days buses leave throughout day and night, but the 9am trip is the hardest. Chaps leave right on time (the only thing that’s probably done on time in East Africa), and when you get to Nateete, u be praying there is no riot for some shit.

The road to Kabale, the worst stretch of 500 km land known to man, is so fucked up, being on this bus is the same as being on a roller coaster, just that this roller coaster lasts 7 hours or so. Thankfully, these buses don’t stop by the roadside, so that smelly hawkers with expired biscuits and boiled eggs don’t jump onto the bus to sell their crappy un-healthy stuff to these passengers, those things are for the weak buses.

Nigerian movies show on these metal transporting devices, aka buses, and they put the volume so loud, you find farmers lining up by the roadside to atleast watch a 30 second clip of the movie as the bus whizzes by them, they return to mulching their yam gardens as they wait for the next bus! We chaps that be posing with i-pods, loaded with 300 of the hardest ol school jams, don’t get to listen to them coz this movie volume is louder than the earphones goddamit!

The boarder, hussle. U get out and all the 60 other passengers are lined up at the immigration place, the sun is so hot but u gots to stand with chaps and brave the heat. Some old woman from Congo will always come up with her immigration form and ask u to fill it , coz she cant write, all she does is give u her passport, and smile.

Enter the office, and these stamp-wielding big bellied civil servants be drinking black tea, with half a doughnut on the side plate, and a copy of the day’s newspaper half open, he looks at yo passport, looks at you, like you owe him some dimes, then lazily stamps the thing and throws it back at ya “I just did u a favour u little punk, now move along”, he seems to say!

No man’s land, 100 chaps following you with foreign currency and small calculators “my rate is better, how much do you have”, these chaps look like buzzing blue flies from a latrine, one wishes he had doom to spray them off!

After the pleasantries of having the passport stamped by the Rwanda chaps (they are an equally boring bunch like their Uganda counterparts), you head to the bus, where EVERYTHING has been removed from the bus, these chaps don’t play. U be like in a court house heading to jail as u all line up to re-enter the bus and point out yo lugguage, the chap opens it and checks virtually EVERYTHING in the bag. Any polythene bag is emptied, the contents dropped on the road, so you have to pick them up.

Some chick, bambi, had her bu panties and a few tampons thrown to the ground, she almost fainted with embarrassment, now that chap who was vibing her had lost the steam! After this humiliation, you are allowed to proceed.

Kigali is too quiet for the average chap that has lived in the rest of East Africa, we guys go crazy till morning, in Kigs however, u can have police come to your house at midnight and tell you to shut down the party, “it’s too noisy at this time!”. There are like 6 or so clubs or bars or hangouts, which can be a total blast if you are chilling here for like a week, that’s a bar a day.

The freedom to talk shit is still limited, owing to the events of the recent past, tempers can still flare and chaps unleash the un-forgotten anger that is still ebbing in their souls, thus a repeat of the 1994 occurrence, so even I am scared to type some shit, some security chap may be playing with google and lands on my shit, and this will be the last post!!

So, due to the circumstances mentioned above, I will say;

My, this country is TOO ballistic, there are NO potholes, there are BALLISTIC people, the police are VERY nice, the bars close in time so we go home and sleep instead of being a nuisance, the town is ORGANISED, and I will tell EVERYBODY about it!!

Over n out!!