Residents Visas!

Well, tomorrow will be one week that we’ve been in Rwanda! In some ways it seems like much longer and that we’ve been away from the US for a very long time.

Today was another long day spent in offices but it was profitable in the end. Mark and I went with Bruce at 7:30 a.m. down to the immigration office to finalize our visas. They had the paperwork ready for us so it wasn’t much of a wait there. The paper work had the amounts listed that we had to pay – 465,000 Rwandan francs (RWF) for the “deposit” and 200,000 RWF for the visa itself. The current exchange rate is about 550 RWF to 1 US dollar so that made each of our visas about $1210. (Emily doesn’t need a Rwandan visa – she will have a student visa in Kenya and a visitor visa here) We knew that it would be that much and it was budgeted into our outgoing funds. We then went to the bank (where we waited in line) and withdrew that amount – in cash! We then went over to the Rwandan Revenue Office (where we waited in line) and gave them the paperwork and the money. They gave us receipts which we were to take back to the Immigration Office. Bruce had a meeting at 9 am so he left us at the Revenue Office (we were driving the Ferdinando’s car which I will now refer to as our car until we buy one).

Mark realized that we really didn’t know for sure how to get back to the Immigration Office from where we were so we decided to buy a road map. We went into small bookstore but they wanted 13,000 RWF ($23) for their map so we went outside and found a guy hawking stuff (actually he came up to us) and told him what we wanted. He said he could get us one and ran off. In the mean time, many other hawkers showed up with lots of maps of Africa and of the entire country. Eventually the first guy came back with the desired road map. He wanted 5,000 RWF ($9) but Mark told him that was the tourist price and we wanted a better price, like 3,000 RWF ($5.50) but he would only go down to 4,000 RWF ($7). We needed the map so we paid him the 4,000 which was better than the 13,000 in the bookstore. I’m glad we had it because it did help us visualize better where we were. Kigali is built up on hills surrounding a large valley and to get most anywhere you have to either go in a circle around the hills or down in the valley and back up again. It’s very easy to get turned around. Plus many of the intersections have round-abouts and it is easy to get off on the wrong street. We also discovered that the city is in the process of redoing the street signs so none of the streets were labeled which didn’t help us at all. Anyway, we made it eventually back to the Immigration Office (where we waited in line) and turned in the receipts. They said to come back to pick up our passports at 3:00.

We had some time before needing to get back to lunch at the Bonvallat’s so we went to Nakumatt and then to the “China” store. What that means is that everything in the store was imported from China. I don't know the real name of the store - the receipt was printed in Chinese! We bought a small Christmas tree there – our first ever “fake” tree but we have not found anything in town that even remotely looks like a live tree we could use. It was $30 dollars so if we use all three years, it is only $10 a year. We also picked some red tinsel garland.

Emily and Mark are setting up the tree while I’m writing this. We brought lights with us – they are red. It is a very – ba bam RED – little tree. Emily hung her newest ornament from Grandma on it.

While Mark and I were galavanting around this morning, Emily stayed at the Rossington’s to work on school work on the internet. We all went to the Bonvallat’s for lunch. The oldest boy (7 years old), Zawa (short for Zawadi which means gift in Swahili) went off to soccer practice after lunch. Emily decided to go watch. After soccer practice, Zawa was invited to a friend’s house to play. His dad, almost jokingly, asked Emily if she wanted to go along and she decided that would be more fun than hanging out our house. I asked her how it was and she said that the boys were typical young boys who don’t like to lose. Every game they played either the boys changed the rules so they would win or just when Emily was about to win, they’d quit! She thought it was pretty funny. I asked her if she spoke French while there. She said she heard a lot of French but didn’t say much. Zawa has pretty good English.

Anyway, while Emily was off, Mark and I went back to the Immigration office to pick up our passports. There was a huge line of people, many waiting for the same thing, some still trying to figure out what paperwork was needed. It got very hot and tiring waiting but finally our turn came up and there were our passports with the Rwandan resident visa stamped in them – good for 2 years and multiple re-entries. Yeah! Everyone we have told has said it is unbelievable that we got them so fast (less than a week in the country) and without more hassles and fines. Many people have said that God must want us here!

This evening we went with the Bonvallats to Zawa’s school for a special Christmas festival. It was basically a fund raiser for the school with a $1 entrance fee and then food and crafts for sale. I was hoping maybe for a hamburger or hotdog but since it is a Belgium school they were selling oysters and crepes! The crepes were good – we didn’t try the oysters. They also had a lot of homemade goodies like cookies and cakes. The crafts were things the kids had made in school.

We were glad to get away for the evening because our neighbor decided to burn trash and the smoke is coming directly into our house. It is really bad. We closed all the windows and doors but these houses are built with a small screened ventilation window in every room near the ceiling which can’t be blocked. Our whole house smells like smoke.

Well, the new Rwandan Resident needs to get to bed. It's been a long day!