Crossing Borders

Forty clicks from Ngara, my estimation, since the way was rising, second gear grinding, they sent a text, a bleep in the silence that each evening stopped our chat as there was twilight:

“We are waiting at the border, when will you arrive.”

For me to be driving, Frankie resting, watching my gears, shading tired eyes, already that says a long day driving.

Frankie waited on my reply. Shelley spoke, all Birmingham, without a trace of her prison grown American accent.

“You know this place, mzee”

Sixteen years since I had been there. Kibanga.

“Those last twenty four kilometres can be bad lands. We shall try stay with the Sisters.”

The beer drinking Sisters of the Precious Blood. I should coco.

It is told that when it was known that Paul Kagame would surely take Kigali a million of the Hutu crossed in silent column across the bridge to Tanzania, walked ( marched, shuffled) to Ngara, a town of less than ten thousand, and set up camp, making it the second biggest population centre in Tanzania. They were declared to be all refugees, the events in Rwanda genocide, and Ngara promptly full with those who play their trade with refugees, became a place. Some years later the Tanzanian army marched them back, in silence once again, back across the bridge. Les Medicins, sulking a bit, decamped to Dafur, Sudan. Passing through Ngara Frank and Has T, pointed out the remnant camps.

“Look, kiembezi” Plastic buckets, old tents, cloth, women fattened, their men, their daughters where: fight on?

There are villages between the border posts of Tanzania and Burundi.

The Sister had set up their place during the time of the “kiembezi”, their main Church, she told me, “was over there, over the hill”, where they, the full time Sisters would go in the morning. Their place near Ngara is a good place, there is food and beer, I bought for all. The gravel crunches when cars arrive.

On the bed I put the computer, mobile phones in use (three), the phone chips, the keeps and those we would dispose, those for Frank, Shelly and I, the decoys for our fellow travellers. Frank had the spare phones, bought on the way. Like all old salts I wondered a moment if it was not easier before all this technology, but then, of course there were no traceable bank deposits and not the need for us.

I had said to Shelly, “cat and mouse, peasant and gamekeeper” got trapped into talking to Helen Finn about the difference between a pheasant and a peasant. Helen Finn was primed to say, at the border “We are going to a conference and have been invited”.

Morning bright it is fresh to the border. The fuel trucks waiting as they were sixteen years ago. Frank greeted those he knew, quite a few, they said “You are here”. We walked to the post, I said, “We want to cross the border” He said “ Have you the documents for that car”. “We have copies” “You need originals”. Did I raise an eyebrow, add an extra crease to my brow. Frank went inside the office. We agreed that we were just going to the villages between the border posts. At Immigration, our passports pristine, even Shelley, they said you can cross, but you will want soon to come back, these people there “wana penda vita sana”