Held Hostage in The Congo

When a bus driver says "ten hours" in Africa, one can usually triple that to arrive at a much more accurate travel time. But I hopped on the bus from Kampala to Kigali with high hopes - this route reputedly had few bandits, fewer rebels, and zero roadblocks.

Of course, I didn't foresee the six flat tires, the supposed holiday that Rwanda's border officials were on, or the impromptu barbeque when the bus driver hit a goat.

After the third flat tire, the driver and the conductor both jumped in the back of a passing truck, and I started joking, "Is he going for a tire or for lunch with his friends? We should have all hopped on the truck!"

Laughing, a tall young man near me introduced himself as Yves, a Tutsi Rwandan, and started talking to me in Swahili. He had guessed that I was from Uganda, but I explained to him that I was American and had just spent four weeks working in rural Uganda on AIDS prevention/education - and therefore had very limited Swahili. He was from Goma, in the Congo, but had been staying with an uncle in Uganda for three weeks - and therefore had very limited English.

The bus staff arrived in another truck and changed the tire; all of us hopped on the bus cheering. Two bumpy hours later, we started groaning again as the fourth tire went flat.

I started chatting again with Yves, who then invited me to his home - a refugee camp where his family relocated during "the war."I then told him that I was actually in Rwanda to conduct research for my undergraduate thesis, "Psychological Effects of Women Raped during the Rwanda Genocide." He became very interested in my research, explaining that while he still had family in Kigali, most were spread throughout refugee camps in the Congo. If I was interested, he could introduce me to them.

If was interested?! I was trying to contain my excitement! Armed only with the phone number of a professor's friend's friend who worked as a translator for those writing books about Rwanda, I knew I would have to be diligent about finding my own leads, and I couldn't have hoped for better luck than Yves.

Two more flat tires and a barbeque later, we arrived in Kigali, only nine hours behind schedule. Yves and I immediately jostled and shoved our way, African style, onto a Goma minibus which proceeded through the 115 most beautiful kilometers in eastern Africa.

We arrived at his home, a blue UNHCR tent near Lake Kivu, in time to eat lunch and spend the rest of the afternoon exploring Goma on his motorcycle. After meeting his father (who now lived with his second wife in a house with a garage), we ate dinner and planned to set out early in the morning to head to his relatives' camp.

We set out so early that we skipped tea and breakfast, but in exchange got to see a spectacular sunrise and Mt. Nyiragongo, an active volcano that has devastated Goma several times, killing 110 in 2003. After driving over dried lava roads and beautiful forests for two hours, we came into an area that indeed looked like a refugee camp...but an entirely deserted one.

"Are we in the right place?" I asked Yves. He reassured me that he'd been coming here for ten years, of course it was the right place.

We hopped off his bike and started walking towards the empty tents. As we wandered along the lines of abandoned homes, eight men sprang out of tents in front of us, sporting weathered military fatigues and AK-47s.

"Uh...I don't think these guys are here to offer us our morning tea," I whispered to Yves.

Obviously a lot more familiar with the activities of rebels in the Congolese forest, he retorted, "Shut up! I'll talk," and put his 6'5" frame protectively in front of me.

A seeming leader of the group stepped forward and started firing questions at us in Kinyarwanda. Although I didn't understand much, I could see that Yves was explaining that his family used to live there, he'd visited only six months ago.

They came towards me, also shouting at me in Kinyarwanda. "Tell him I'm a foreign tourist!" I urged Yves. Despite his best efforts to explain that I only spoke English and a little Swahili, the commander obviously did not believe him.

After ten minutes of me shouting: "American! I'm from America," he raised his gun for silence and said haltingly, "You no foreign! You black! You Uganda. You Kenya? You spy!"

After four weeks traveling through rural villages in Uganda, my skin had changed from its normal Indian-brown to an African-black. Regardless, this man obviously thought all people from America were white, so I surely couldn't be American.

"Passport!" he barked. Without thinking, I pulled out the only identification I regularly carried on me - my U.S. military ID. "YES! I know you spy!"

Talking excitedly, the men took turns examining my card. Yves and I stood silently for half an hour, me quivering and Yves glaring at me murderously. (Much to their credit, they did actually provide us with steaming tin cans of tea.)

Yves explained that they were trying to figure out who I was and what to do with us. They apparently decided quickly thereafter, because we were marched at gunpoint back towards the road, and it occurred to me that being an American really held no sway here - these rebels considered all humans dispensable.

As they talked amongst themselves, Yves said, "They're going to let us go, but they want all our things." He didn't have anything to surrender, but I handed over $85 and my backpack, which had a couple notebooks and a small tape recorder.

The leader stood with his hand outstretched, and I watched, stunned, as Yves finally surrendered the keys to his motorcycle. Two men rode off on it immediately, and the others told us to sit still for half an hour then walk back to the main road.

Yves and I hitchhiked back to Goma, a not-too-dangerous activity in eastern Africa, and were quickly picked up by a man driving a truck full of chickens. When we explained why we couldn't pay him, said, "Yes, that camp was abandoned a month ago. The rebels were raiding it, taking all the food, raping a lot of the women, kidnapping children. They settled closer to Uganda this time." He dropped us off in Goma and didn't ask for a franc, insisting that this was the luckiest day of Yves' and my life.

Back home, Yves mother greeted us at the tent flap with a giant smile. "How was your trip, did you get all your research done?" We didn't even know what to tell her.

I got on a bus to Kigali that very night and vowed that all of my interviews with Rwandan women would be conducted within the city, in coffee shops, cafes, or other similarly safe, well-lit locations free of rebels and AK-47's! ■

__________________________________________________________________________

Robin Chaurasiya has been wandering the globe since her first trip to India at the age of three. Since then, she has worked, volunteered, and studied in countries throughout Europe, Central America, South Asia, East Africa, and the Middle East. In pursuit of her lifelong goal to make the world a just place for women, she is currently pursuing her MA in Gender Studies at the Central European University in Budapest.

__________________________________________________________________________