|
Living on the Edges: Border Towns and Border Posts in Africa
Barry Sesnan
|
|
Border towns and border posts in Africa come in many shapes and sizes. Some are very artificial, created by the existence of the border itself. The same language is usually spoken on both sides; the people are often of the same tribe, or ethnic group (which has become for some reason the more politically correct term). Others represent a historical reality such as when two different Magnus grew up with two different capitals directly opposite, each other, built at the first point where a boat can start to go deep into the heart of Africa. Where have I heard that phrase before? Often borders are just a blocking-point on a road between two countries, around which a lot of normal movement continues to take place. Occasionally like when we fled from Goma just in front of the lava, the border post turns out to be a too-tight constriction where a six lane road suddenly narrowed to a two lane road and narrowed further to let only one car at a time through the barrier. Kenya's border posts with Somalia are few and very far between. In between the posts there is nothing at all, apart from a few old land mines laid in a forgotten fight, preventing people from moving backwards and forwards. In some cases, in fact, the border post is just to control vehicles. It's also not uncommon to see small children crossing in one, or strangely, as between Kenya and Uganda, or Kenya and Somalia in both directions, to go to school (usually because of the language of instruction). Occasionally they have a psychological as well as a geographical reality, like the bridge between Rwanda and Tanzania over the Kagera river across which the refugees in 1994 fled from the genocide (that famous photo) while then and for some time after great numbers of bodies were carried downstream under the bridge. Those lucky enough to have been given control of this point, from immigration officers to customs inspectors, use it for petty gain. Rare is the border which an ordinary African can cross without slipping the equivalent of a dollar in the passport, or more if the passport is expired. This little something has gone under the name of 'the missing page' ('Your passport is missing a page') and others. In a case a few years ago a mzungu friend of mine travelling with a Kenyan found that the Kenyan was held back at the Uganda border while he himself was to be let through without a problem. It took me time to convince him that he should just leave his friend for a short time. His friend could, and did, sort it out. It happens that I often lived on, or near a border. (Now is the time to get out your atlas.) Kinshasa/Brazzaville. At Kinshasa the huge River Congo was the border and I looked over to Brazzaville in the other Congo from my apartment. We got television from both countries; they both had French as the official language and both had Kikongo and Lingala as their main local languages, yet the movement between the two was surprisingly small, mainly because of the bureaucracy on both sides. It was a very short crossing but it could cost you thirty or forty dollars by the time you had paid everyone off. One city was a creation of French colonialism and has made a hero of their French founder, de Brazza. The other was Belgian and does little to commemorate its erstwhile colonial bosses. Indeed there is little to commemorate in that history of cruelty, personal royal rule, massive exploitation and dreadful lack of education which led to the country becoming independent with fewer than 100 doctors. Like anywhere boys tried to cross the river illegally by hanging onto boats and swimming the last few metres. Yet just as at other borders you had to wonder why they bothered when there was unguarded river for 100s of kilometres in all directions. Mandera/Bula Hawa. In Mandera, where I spent more than a year, where three countries, Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya, meet at a point, the border was a colonial creation. There, a decrepit town built by Italians, now occupied by highland Ethiopians, looks across a usually dry river bed at the chaotic and violent all-Somali town of Bula Hawa, and the Kenyan town of Mandera which has telephones and electricity. I didn't get to Ethiopia though I saw it every day. It was not an approved border. They had a history of arresting wandering foreigners such as aid workers, dragging them to Addis Ababa and then spending many days before setting them free. However Somali youth (and down country'Kenyan men) often crossed to Ethiopia for the drink and the women, not knowing, or not caring, that like Mandera itself it had one of the highest AIDS rates in the world. In this the youth are like their Hutu age mates in the Rwanda town of Gisenyi who cross to the Congo to dance, and to get away from the stifling control they are under in Rwanda. High AIDS rates are common at borders, of course, like Kasumbalesa in southern Congo on the road from South Africa to the Congo copper belt, where, as part of my HIV/AIDS work I hasten to add, I had visited the houses of 'les femmes libres' who existed because of the lorry route and the fact that drivers had to spend several days dealing with the bureaucracy of the borders. My work took me regularly into Somalia, where any male who could stand up had an AK 47, and would not give it up for anything, and where there was little law apart from that imposed by the local clan chief in the guise of District Commissioner. Bula Hawa had an Osama bin Laden primary school before the Nairobi bombing. He often crossed that border in the mid nineties. On the border itself as you entered Somalia and passed through the customs post my project built which enabled the war lord to extract even more from people crossing, the Somalis had put up a big sign: Leave AIDS at home! At least on the Kenya-Uganda border it was more pragmatic or more realistic: Come with your partner! Kenya often tried to close the border when the authorities in Nairobi wanted to stop the arms trade, but whatever the official position, schoolchildren still crossed every morning and evening and so did the milk-sellers (who in a Somali saying meaning, 'I heard it on the grapevine' were the bearers of rumours from door to door as they sold their wares). Hence, I heard it from the milk-seller. Mubi/Boukoula. Mubi in Nigeria was 20 kilometres from the Cameroon border, where we went on Sunday to drink wine. It is a pretty remote area and there was no electricity, but the old Fulani, well traveled everywhere, who ran the bar would bring the beer and French wine up from the depths of a well and tell us great stories of when he fought for the French in Indochina and elsewhere. Goma/Gisenyi. Goma in Congo and Gisenyi in Rwanda were more or less the same town, but separated not only by politics but for me by the policies of my employers, UNICEF, so that in Goma I was under the regional office in Abidjan, and in Gisenyi less than 5 km away they were under Nairobi. I fled with thousands of others over that border into Rwanda the night of the volcano. As we looked back we saw the city burn and heard petrol stations explode and cars 'pop.' We abandoned the car and continued on foot. We returned the next day to organise the aid response to the destruction of the homes of 80,000 people and the incineration of 41 schools. The lava did not cross the border despite the fears of that day. It stopped just short and turned south and plunged into the lake with a great mushroom cloud of steam rising in the red glow of the lava around midnight. Sudan-Uganda-Zaire. In 1983 I visited Base at mile 38 (Tamanya wa Talatin) south of Yei in the little finger of land projecting into Uganda and Zaire, now Congo. Base, later known as Baz or Bazi, was then a booming border town where coffee and ground nuts from Sudan were exchanged for cars, stereos, etc. Everything was on the Zaire side of the road. Indeed people joked as a chicken ran from Zaire to Sudan. Further along the road it was Sudan to Uganda. Twenty five years later, I came again and the town had totally disappeared since there was no longer any route from anywhere significant in Congo. However, further away there is a new town called Ariwara that fulfills some of the same functions, notably supplying registration plates very cheap to vehicles plying into Sudan. Borders and Road Blocks. I dislike the actual process of crossing borders on a deep psychological level. I feel tense even when I am not guilty! It is a little the same about road blocks, though my view of them was once changed in Sudan when I asked the local chief why they had suddenly put up a block on the main road between Juba and Yei. His answer was to ask me, 'Why should you rush through our town like that, impolitely, without stopping?' A road block brings us a little notice and a little prosperity; the policemen's wives sell the tea; a small town grows up beside the road. In this situation removing the road block becomes difficult as there are, as always, people benefiting from it. From Ghana to Ivory Coast. Friends who came over from Ghana recently for the weekend by public transport met 15 road blocks from the border and were forcibly vaccinated for yellow fever even though they had up to date yellow cards -- and oddly enough, had actually had to have injections in Accra in order to get them! On the way back they discovered that there are special Peugeut 504 taxis that go to the border where the price is higher, but the driver pays off all the road blocks for you. If you take the bus from Abidjan to Bamako -- which I would have loved to do before the crisis but now it goes through ex-rebel territory -- the conductor charges everyone $30 to pay off the road blocks! In Kenya that happens in the buses from Mandera down country to Nairobi. The normal fare is 2000 shs and you get checked by the police everywhere, especially if you are a Kenyan Somali or 10,000 shs if you are a real Somali from Somalia with no passport at all. In the latter case you never get out of the bus, and you are waved through! Searching Bags on the Uganda Sudan Border. Once, crossing into SPLA controlled territory with a Kenyan Indian researcher for Windle Trust, we were stopped by two very young-looking, very tall, very black soldiers in flip-flops who demanded to see inside Dr. Anisa's luggage. They pulled out her bras and panties one by one, handled them, held them up to the sun, obviously never having seen anything like them in their years in the bush war. Meanwhile, they ignored all the things like the video equipment and laptops which we thought they would have concentrated on. Uvira (Burundi-Congo). In 2006 I had agreed that I would be picked up at the Congo-Burundi border as my host's car couldn't reach Uvira or Bujumbura because of the broken bridge. This meant that I crossed the border on foot and not by car. Once again, I thought that it should be compulsory for all expatriates and senior politicians to cross borders on foot, or take a road journey to know what is really going on. When I crossed by NGO car, no one checked my bags or gave me any trouble. When I crossed on foot, the Congo customs opened all my bags, despite the fact there was nothing you could carry into Congo that could do more harm than what is already happening in the country. I was also asked for my Yellow Vaccination Card, a requirement abolished in most countries of the world. Again, what possible disease could I be bringing into Congo that did not already exist there? The Little Yellow Card. The yellow card is the cause of a lot of problems for ordinary African travellers who find themselves being asked for it by ordinary policemen in the middle of nowhere, who will demand a bribe if you don't have it. Of course, the principal result of this lack of control is that everyone, fearing getting AIDS from an injection, just buys a ready completed yellow card -- conveniently available just behind the vaccination office under that mango tree over there. There is always a convenient mango tree. Passports in Somalia. So, it's similar to getting a passport in Mogadishu where, at the collapse of the government 15 years ago, one man fled with the passport books, but another fled with the Ministry's embossing stamp. Both have set up shop in the market, and you need to see both to get your passport. Again just as with the yellow card it is remarkably quick and convenient. It rarely takes more than an hour; unless you insist on an already used one -- it has more credibility. That takes just a little longer. And Finally, Some Oddities. I have flown on a flight which starts off as a domestic flight -- no need for passport -- in Mogadishu, but arrives as an international flight in Hargeisa, Somaliland, where you need your passport and visa to disembark. Work it out. I have been on a train from apartheid South Africa to Mozambique -- where there was no colour bar -- where the connecting door between the black and the white part of the train was officially opened at the border and then closed on the way back. I have also taken the ferry at Kazungula from Zambia to Botswana. This has the distinction of being the only place in the world where four countries meet. |