I’ve been living in Kigali for a year now with some trips away now and then. During that time I’ve ventured off to the DR Congo, Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Burundi, the UK, USA, and Haiti. I’ve been lucky that all of these trips have lined up really well with the visa entry rules for Rwanda which has made life pretty easy for me as far as paperwork goes.
I already avoided one hurdle when, for some reason, Rwanda decided that Canadians could no longer get a three month visa for free on arrival. I was lucky the guy at the bank who was tasked with photocopying my Canadian passport warned me about the change. I could have found myself in Uganda at the border fighting a losing battle to try to get back into Rwanda had I not been given that little tidbit of advice. Instead, with the heads up, I left on my Canadian passport and re-entered with my British one. Possibly dodgy, who knows, but it worked and since the Brits were still on warm and fuzzy terms with the Rwandans, it meant continued free, three month, on-arrival visas.
But now my timing has failed me a bit. I’m heading off on another ridiculous surprise trip (post to come soon) on August 30th but my visa is due to expire on the 21st. Oops. I’d heard from several people that it was pretty easy to renew in-country for $40 so I figured I’d just do that (visas to Uganda are $50 and Burundi is $40 so, while the Rwandan visa is free, I’d have to pay anyways to get into a neighbouring country). So I booked my flight for August 30th. Then I hear rumblings about how it’s actually pretty difficult and slightly risky to get an extension in Rwanda without a good reason for why you’re going to be a ‘tourist’ for longer than three months.
So here I sit. Contemplating whether to go to Uganda or to Burundi to get a new visa for the nine days until my flight out of here for two weeks. I’m not really too worried about it as I’ve never heard about people having problems at either border… but it got me thinking about how this whole existence is slightly shady. Renewing tourist visas over and over and over until I either leave or get kicked out. I know people do it all over Asia (didn’t Thailand recently make it more difficult to do this?) and, while most people I know here have jobs that give out work visas, I do know a few people doing the same thing as me.
It sort of makes things a bit annoying and also a bit unstable feeling. The border guys could turn me away at any point if they wanted to and, while I’m not necessarily paranoid about that ever happening, it does mean that I’m not likely to make any long term plans in Rwanda. Living three months at a time is ok if I have trips planned anyways, but annoying otherwise.
But! It’s got to be done. I guess paperwork and visas is one of the hazards of this lifestyle that is pretty inflexible and can cause some problems. Have visa rules caused any of you guys problems? It would really suck to be booted out of a country for playing the system, especially if you’ve set a pretty stable-ish life up for yourself. Is it possible to have a stable life when you’re just living tourist visa to tourist visa?
I guess next week I’ll be in either Burundi or Uganda for a few days… here’s hoping I get back in!
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