THE CUSTOMS FIASCO (A SHORT PLAY)

SCENE 1: Pouring with rain, Patrick and Marie arrive at the busy Rwandan Gatuna border post. There is one little building with an even smaller covered area where 30+ people are huddled to escape the downpour. It is almost impossible to stay dry.

Rwandan Immigration Official (RIO): You need to pay US$30 per person to exit Rwanda.

Marie: What?

RIO: Your EAC visa has expired. When you drove from Kenya to Tanzania, you left the East African Community.

Marie: What?!

RIO: Your EAC visa was voided when you entered Tanzania. Marie: But the visa is valid for 90 days and includes Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya.

RIO: It is now voided, and you must pay again.

SCENE 2: Patrick stands back while Marie tackles the RIO with successive verbal body blows.

The crowd gathers as the two heavyweights battle it out. During the final round, Patrick steps in – it’s a tag-team effort. Both leave the ring battered and bruised.

The official was correct and we were wrong. We hadn’t realised that our EAC visa only allows travel in a specific direction. In other words, from Kenya, we should have gone to Uganda and then Rwanda – not into Tanzania, a non-EAC member state, like we’d done. We had voided our visa, but previous officials hadn’t picked it up.

The arguing continued and eventually the Rwandan immigration official confiscated our passports. Frantic calls were made to both the South African and French embassies. The SA embassy told us to just pay and get out. I went back to pay, but now the officer refused. “You are in the country illegally,” he said. “The passports will be sent to Kigali.”

We dreaded the thought of doing the 150 km (5 – 10 hours) round trip to sort out the mess. The French embassy made a few calls and came back to us to say that the RIO was prepared to release the passports and allow us to pay the US$30 (R440) per person charge. Relieved, we paid and got out as fast we could.

We still had to go through the Ugandan side of the border post, where we would potentially face the same issue, but thankfully the Ugandan officials let us in without a hitch.

After four hours of body blows in the rain, we were finally on our way!