Unexpected Journey

Last night the guests of the guest house were celebrating Christine's birthday at a restaurant and Harper goes "Oh Josh, I remember what I wanted to tell you before. Sam wants to talk to you, something about a meeting in Kigali tomorrow." So I call Sam and instead of going to Beni like I was planning on, I took a bus to Kigali today. (I was actually going to go to Beni. In fact, I gave the money for the plane ticket to Judy to take into the logistic staff yesterday and she forgot to give them the money so they never booked my ticket. Thank you God.)

I almost didn't make it on the bus (really a van) that I took. I got a ticket for a bus to leave at 12:30 and because my phone had the wrong time, completely thought it was way earlier than it was. I went to the market with the girls and then realized after like a half hour that it was already 12:20 and I had to go. I went to the bus stop in Goma and the bus already left. I quick hopped on a moto to the boarder and got there no problem. The people in the immigration office on the Congolese side couldn't have been in less of a hurry and took their time looking at my stuff. As I approached the Rwandan boarder I saw the bus. At the boarder, it stops and the people walk across on foot and then get back on the bus before going to the stop on the Rwandan side. Well, the Rwandan people weren't in any hurry either and everyone likes talking to the white guy, even if they get lots of them a day. I went into a building so a security lady could search my bags and the bus was gone when I got out. I walked over to the immigration office with my immigration card all filled out and hand it through the bars to the guy at the desk. He looks at it and starts asking questions about how long I've been here and what I've been doing (in English). Then, he looks at the passport and looks at me and he goes "this isn't you."

Ok, so what if I've been to the Philippines and back and then to Africa and through plenty of airports with that passport and no one else has said anything at all? I pull off my hat and he's like "nope." I'm thinking "come on! I've got to go catch this bus" and he's just holding me up. I don't know why he thought that because I only insisted that I was the person like 3 times and then said "you are welcomed in our country" and I considered it over. Just kidding, he comes back again saying "are you sure this is you?" and I told him I had an American drivers license too but it wasn't any use. Finally he just let me go, so I don't really know what the deal was. Really, I thought it was stupid to ask all those questions and then not even do anything about it, but oh well. I made it through immigration.

I got on a moto on that side of the boarder and asked him to take me to the bus stop as best I could. He took me to the wrong place, but thankfully they knew exactly what I was talking about and told the moto to take me to the right place. The bus was still there and after showing them my ticket and explaining (one Swahili sentence) that I missed the bus in Goma, it was no problems. We only sat there for about a half hour then waiting for one more person to make a full bus. All that hurrying for nothing...