Gisenyi, Congo, Lake Kivu (the Great Adventure)

The weekend of July 22-24, my Bible student Mucyo and I took a trip to Gisenyi, in the northwest part of the country, and on the border of DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo). (As an aside, Gisenyi is also called Rubavu—many cities in Rwanda have two names due to the fact that the names were changed a number of years ago by the present regime. So Butare is also called Huye, Ruhengeri is also called Musanze, etc. However, longtime habits die hard, and people still use the old names; even many of the street signs have not been changed.) By the way, two weeks ago, Mucyo completed the Bible Teach book. He wants to continue making spiritual progress. Great!

I had two objectives: one, I wanted to visit Goma, the town just across the border in Congo; and two, I wanted to swim in Lake Kivu, but on the Rwandan side. Mucyo had the intention of attending the wedding of a distant relative in Gisenyi on Sunday, or at least make an appearance. So we set out on Friday afternoon in Mucyo’s little red Mercedes. (Yes, Mercedes makes cars that small.)

Speaking of Congo, the usual tourist visa fee for Americans is $175 (ouch!), but because I have a residency permit from Rwanda, for only $7.50 I could get what is called a “laissez-passer”—also known as CEPGL—for the purpose of visiting any of the countries in the Lake Kivu region (namely, Burundi and Congo). So why not visit these places? Well, after the weekend experience we had, I might have decided to stay home. But that’s the way adventures are sometimes.

You may remember from a previous post that on my last visit to Gisenyi for a Kingdom Hall dedication, I took a very discreet photo of the border crossing, but that’s as far as I got. This time we managed to cross the border, but let me give an explanation, which will unfortunately not be a simple one. However, let’s back up a bit….

First, we arrived in Gisenyi on Friday evening after four hours of driving on winding roads. Mucyo has many relatives in Gisenyi, so he has visited there many times, and he normally stays at this Catholic-owned hotel. So that’s where we went. The place is clean, quiet, and safe, and aside from the icon of Jesus hanging on the cross on the wall, I had no other objections.

However, backing up the story once more, I should mention that I woke up on Friday morning extremely tired, and as the day wore on, I started to feel very sick. This culminated in diarrhea, and then on Saturday morning, nausea and vomiting. This was while Mucyo was driving me around Gisenyi to show me some of the so-called major tourist attractions of the town.

Now, Saturday was the day we had planned to go into Congo for a short visit, so I thought that maybe by afternoon after a few hours of rest I would be fit enough to do that. We didn’t want to take the car into Congo because (1) the roads are bad, and (2) who knows what could happen at the border with the car. So we left the car at the hotel and took motorcycles to the border, which is called “petite barrière.”

You don’t realize what effect bouncing around sitting on the back of a motorcycle has on your digestive system, so by the time we got to the border I was feeling worse. But that’s not the end of it!

As an observation (not that the following comments are necessarily any reflection on the countries themselves), Rwanda has a very modern-looking immigration building, with nice, clean, tiled floors, fluorescent lighting, computers, etc. The road in Rwanda leading up to the border is well-paved and well-maintained.

However, once you cross the border, you ask yourself, where is the Congolese immigration station? There are many small, dirty, squalid huts on both sides of the potholed, rocky road but no clear indication of where you are supposed to go. What happens is that someone approaches you—and you have no idea if this person is even an immigration official—who directs you to someone else, and on and on it goes until someone finally stamps your documents. And of course you are surrounded by a thousand other people, many of whom are carrying loads of merchandise on their backs, trying to cross the border also.

The road leading into Congo

Well, I passed Rwanda and Congo immigration without any problem, but Mucyo got pulled aside in one of the huts for what appeared to be a long discussion. I don’t want to get into the details of what the problem was—and the conversations were totally in French—but let’s just say that after sitting there for a while with him and two officials (one of whom claimed to be a pastor—yeah, right!) I was starting to feel severe stomach pains and nausea and wondering how I was going to survive in Goma, especially looking down the road at that third-world environment and imagining what the toilets were like. At that point Mucyo asked me to give him all the US dollars I had, after having already turned over all his Rwandan and Congolese money. Then, some more paperwork was filled out, and he said, “Don’t worry, Brian. You can go back to the hotel. I will resolve this.”

This was somewhat of a relief, so I went back through Congo and Rwanda immigration again, took another motorcycle back to the hotel, rushed to the bathroom, and then changed clothes for what I thought was going to be a rest for the remainder of the day. But then, Mucyo called me and said, they won’t let me go until I give them more US dollars, which you can find in my backpack in the car. So can you please come back as soon as you can? Groan.

So I went through the process of finding the money, taking another motorcycle back to the border, going through immigration again, but this time a lady official, before stamping my CEPGL, asked me, why are you coming through here again on the same day? I said, my friend is having a problem and I need to bring him money. Her only question was, how much? When I told her, she called someone and got the story. So I was allowed, after some delay, to return to Mucyo in the same room, give him the money, and then they let us leave. That was after they returned his belt, which is taken—in case you didn’t know—as evidence of being “arrested.”

Oh, but just before we left, one of the officials asked, so are you planning to spend the night in Goma? What are you going to see there? Yeah, after what you put us through, why should we even visit your country? What other surprises do you have in store?

Well, the truth is that Mucyo didn’t do anything illegal. But because he made the mistake of showing them a certain Congo-related document in addition to his Rwandan passport, this was their opportunity to extract money from him. Additionally, they accused him of being a “spy” bringing in a rich Chinese-American businessman. This is how they operate: once they get you into one of these rooms, they refuse to let you go until you pay. Even on the slightest pretense. If you were to tell me that corruption in Congo is rampant, I would not disagree with you.

So perhaps it’s just as well that in my sickened condition, we didn’t get to Goma. The next day, I was feeling much better, so we had breakfast at the hotel—my first food in two days—and then Mucyo dropped me off at the beach of Lake Kivu while he went to his wedding. I swam for about an hour, relaxed, and then shortly after noon we headed back to Kigali.

What happened is that I got food poisoning. But it was here in Kigali, not during the trip. So at least Congo is exonerated from that. And after Sunday I was mostly fine. But this trip is one more of those that gets burned in your memory. One day—but not immediately—we will both probably laugh about this.