Legal.

It is official, my visa in my hand and everything!

The Feeling of Limbo

My visa to stay in Rwanda has been drama, and continues to be drama everyday. I am extraordinarily frustrated by everything: their lack if consideration, my inability to be able to finish the process, the feeling of being stuck, the anxiety it causes.

I am in limbo. 

The Directorate of Immigration has been holding my passport since March 20th, 30 days and counting, under the pretext of granting me a visa, a process that is suppose to take 3 days. Unfortunately the length of their decision making process has not been the only drama involved in this adventure which includes an initial flat out rejection of our paperwork (I am unqualified to teach here because I do not have a degree in education), the final acceptance of our paperwork, a delay in granting the visa (until we could turned in our education degrees - again - as if I can just pull one of those out of my back pocket), the approval of our visa, going into to the office to pick up an approved visa to hear "oh just kidding, we made a mistake, come back later," national holidays and the week of commemoration where things shut down, and an ignoring of our calls and emails as we attempt to get in touch with them to ask what is going on. Drama.

I don't know if they lost our passports and don't want to admit it. Or if they are annoyed that we are connected to Catholic priests and so they are dragging their feet (the Catholic Church having lost much of their credibility here for both participating in the genocide - some priests were responsible for turning their fleeing and afraid congregations over to the death squads instead of protecting them (though there are certainly martyrs, the Jesuits were some of the first attacked and killed here on the 2nd or 3rd day of violence) and at the same time because the Church literally abandoned the country. Many priests fled or if they were forgeign nationals were pulled out of Rwanda by their own governments leaving the carnage). Or maybe they are mad that we circumvented the usual process by going higher up, not taking no for an answer. Or maybe, and very likely, we are just the victims of larger political power plays that we do not understand. Rwanda needs less and less help from the outside these days. They have come incredibly far in the last 20 years to rebuild their country, not just as it was, but better than it was. The government is cracking down on granting visa to Westerners. It is becoming harder and harder for Muzungos (white people), which Tim and I certainly are, to get visas. 

Being someone who likes following rules it makes me uncomfortable to be in a foreign country and not have a passport on me, to not have proper documentation, to not be able to prove that it is okay for me to be here. I have nothing beyond a copy of my passport and my driver's license. My entry visa has expired during this process. 

I feel trapped. 

I cannot leave this country whether I want to or not.

It is hard to leave the city even in the off chance that "today is the day!" It is hard to leave the city because 2-3 hours in every direction is a border into another country and it is just not a good idea to be near a border without a passport. It is hard to leave the city because ID is required everywhere. Going to the library here in the city I had to give up my driver's liscense just to get in ( and it would've been my passport if I had had it). To get a SIM card for my phone I had to show my passport. If you leave center where I stay after 7:30pm, you have to check out, and they ask for your passport number. 

I waver daily between my (ever-decreasing,as his process continues) desire to stay and my desire to go home. If I have to leave then I would like to move on with my life and make new plans, but I have planned to stay, to finish out the school year, to see my commitment through. If they don't want me here than I will leave, but oh wait I can't. I am physically stuck within the borders of this small country until I get my passport back.

It is break right now, 3 weeks off school. I planned to travel the country. I wanted to see things. It is the longest break we have, we have a shorter 2 week break in the summer and that is it. We arrived a week before school started and jumped right in, there was no time to explore, to adjust, no acclimation period.  After 13 weeks of working and working, teaching and learning, exhaustion and constantly saying to myself and others "I am going over break when I have time. I will see it over break, when I finally have time." It is break now, but all those plans have fallen through without the paperwork. Our closest friends are the priests here who really do look out for us. They encourage us to explore and offer transportation, company, or their connections when possible, which has been very generous of them. They have no obligation to invest themselves in us, but even their generosity falters with our lack of paperwork. One of the priests was going to take Tim and I to the SW corner of the country for Easter, near the Burundi and DRC borders. The night before we were leaving, the trip was cancelled. They were not, in the end, comfortable taking us without paperwork, especially not so close to the borders, and so we are stuck yet again now with no Easter plans. I certainly don't blame the priests and I understand their reluctance, in fact I am fairly certain they are as disappointed about not going as we are. 

I feel held back.

I am in limbo.

Dignity?

I was spat on today. It does not feel good to be spat on. It is really realy demeaning actually. We were walking back from somewhere and Tim was about 150 feet ahead of me. I could see a guy, teens? 20s? talking to him up ahead. The guy had grabbed Tim's arm.  You could tell just by watching the interaction that the guy was asking for money. Tim shook him off and crossed the street. I followed behind. As I got close to the intersection, I saw the guy walking my way and assumed I would get the same treatment, but instead he didn't say anything. He spat all over me. It got in my hair and on my skin and on my clothes. I didn't do anything. I didn't even say anything. What can you say when one single action takes away something so central to you? I am not sure what I would call it.... human dignity? Self worth? Ego? I just know it is something powerful, something that is both important and central to me as a person. It is hard to blame the guy really. There is no way he saw me as a person, he didn't even really look at me, let alone speak to me, he just saw my whiteness, my perceived wealth, and quite possibly (given it is the week of genocide remembrance and colonialists/the "West" got more than their fair share of the blame) he looked at me and saw remnants of the system that tore this continent, this country, and these people in particular apart. I can rationalize for him though, I can try to put myself in his shoes and accept? or forgive? his actions. Do his actions even call for forgiveness or just forgetfulness? I can put words in his mouth when I don't think he can do the same for me. I think he thought:

"I am just another white person, another person to say no. I might be connected to that last white guy who had just rejected his plea. I have money but am unwilling to share it. I am here in Rwanda to either fix things (which aren't broken, why do these white people insist in "helping"? Why is our country a charity case? Why does their self worth come at the expense our dignity?) or because I have wealth. If I am here to "help," then why don't I help him? He needs it much as the next person, he needs it as much as any project. If I am here because I have wealth, why not share it?"

I don't know how many people he asked. I don't know  how many blacks and whites, and reds, oranges, blues and purples before us said no, before he was so fed up he took it out on me. Clearly, Tim was, as the expression goes, the straw that broke the camels back. I received the spit because I was the next white person to walk by a minute later. I am not sure what I should've done. There were no police in that exact spot, but there was one not too far away. Should I have turned him in? Should I have called out? Should I have given him money, simply because I could? Simply to prove him wrong or to prove that I am different? I have been here long enough to know that I probably could have gotten him into trouble. Is it better to let him have that victory? Did he need that more in that moment than it takes from me? There is very little he can really do to me or take from me that doesn't cost him a lot. The law, as unfair as it may seem, is mostly on my side due to my "wealth" over his. Spitting on me and then disappearing into the crowd is one of the few things he can actually get away with, one of the few things he might control in regards to me, to whites, to all the foreigners in his country, to his wealth versus mine. It upset me a lot; more than it probably should have in reality. When I reflect upon the ways and times Arficans all over the world (especially African Americans and those under colonialist rule) were treated as second class citizens, that they were spat on and worse without the ability to say anything against it, one little instance isn't really bad is it?  I got a very small taste for what it is like to be a minority, to be treated as less than human. So why, if it was so small, does it bother me so much then?