INNOVATIVE EXPERTS

Thanks to Nasser Road and its “innovative team of experts”, I managed to secure a visa to a conference abroad, bid all and sundry farewell and gave away all my clothes, only to be nabbed and deported back to Uganda…
I had eluded my neighbours for two weeks, having secured all the necessary documentation required for my trip to attend the International Labour Conference in Geneva, Switzerland. It is in the culture of potential travelers never to reveal their mission before the final moment. This is to avert any possible evil intentions of human nature precipitated by malice and envy.
During my final year at Ndejje University, I had become an Internet wizard in search of fortune overseas. It was then that I discovered the workshop, which was open to participants worldwide, especially Africans. I planned to travel abroad in the name of attending the workshop, then abscond and remain there, find an odd job and reap the kind of wealth I had seen people getting from odd jobs (kyeyo).
I donated most of the clothes I felt would not match world class standards to my needy friends. I was to attend as an advocate against child labour and abuse, working with a certain NGO as a project coordinator, all courtesy of Nasser Road experts, who are known for forging all manner of documents.
My mother welcomed my idea. Being her first born, I could work and facilitate my two siblings through school, as well support the entire family since mother was only a farmer. She sold part of the family land and catered for all my monetary requirements, she even gave me enough pocket money to support me for weeks in Geneva as I sorted myself out. On my agenda, I was determined to revamp our residential house as a challenge to our father, who abandoned mother for another wife many years ago.
On the day of departure, a few family friends were invited to accompany me, but more importantly to have an opportunity to visit the one and only International Air Port Entebbe. The pickup we had hired from Masulita, Luweero, seemed insufficient as everybody scrambled to come along; who wanted to miss the sight of an airplane taking off the ground? I called whoever I knew to break the news of my departure, since nobody could stop me then. Even those I had always envied for their sophistication at university sounded defeated at my news. It was my first time to visit the airport too, but most importantly, I was travelling abroad.
From the moment I arrived at the airport, I detached myself from the rest of the family and started a conversation with whoever gave me an audience until I was aboard Ethiopian Airlines. It was after takeoff that I remembered I hadn’t even waved goodbye to my family.
We finally landed in Switzerland after several hours and stops at different airports. I was caught off guard when I was summoned by a panel of legal immigration officers for serious interrogation. There were two ladies and one gentleman in suits pinned with immigration tags.
They greeted me respectfully by name, reading from my passport, and assigned me a seat facing them.
The unpreparedness I exhibited in approaching questions exposed my deception in the whole matter – I was ignorant about the child labour situation in Uganda and how successful our NGO was. They were reading from the document I had fabricated at Nasser Road, which described an NGO that was nonexistent! Actually, I hadn’t revised it fully since acquiring it.
The last straw was when they asked about the details of the NGO director, whom they had failed to access on phone several times due to “his number not being available on the MTN network”. Actually, I had faked that phone number but didn’t expect anybody to question it, given the simplicity with which I had received the visa.
When the officers started speaking Swiss, which I didn’t understand, it was signal enough that something adverse was yet to happen. They all left the room and asked me to wait. I realised I was in detention when a police officer came over and handed me a soft drink, cautioning me about my behaviour and movements at the airport before he locked the door.
By midnight, I was back on the aircraft, headed to Uganda via Dubai. I reflected on how much money I had wasted, how my family would perceive this news and reactions from the friends I had boasted about the trip to. When they served dinner on the plane that night, my appetite was AWOL; how was I supposed to face the friends I had given my clothes? The euphoria of securing a visa and my departure had long dissipated; I didn’t imagine ever smiling again. In despair, I looked at the passport which recently had been my most precious possession but had become useless in a matter of hours.
At Entebbe Airport, I called mother and broke the sad news to her, but she asked several times who I was because the Ruth she knew had left Uganda two days before. It was a big blow when she realised the truth, but she comforted me and promised to keep it confidential. We agreed to meet at my uncle’s workplace in Kiyembe and find me a soft landing place to hide and find something to do with the $1,500 I was supposed to have used as pocket money abroad.
I helped my uncle at his shop for one month before he asked me to invest my own money into it. Eight years today, our business is thriving and whenever I go to the village, people think I derived my success from abroad.
I normally encourage friends in challenging moments thus, “What you call the end can really be the beginning.”