August 2002 found me in prison in Rwanda. When the enumerators of - TopicsExpress



          

August 2002 found me in prison in Rwanda. When the enumerators of the 2002 Rwanda National Census came to our prison (the famous Gereza Ya Kigali also popularly in Rwanda as merely 1930), I refused to be counted. The prisoners (infungwa) had an ellaborate government system and for my intransigence, I was arrested and imprisoned (oh yes, a prison in prison and an arrest done by prisoner police). Some guy from the British Embassy, who visited me regularly in prison, advised me to accept to be counted. I refused. The guy who had accompanied the Britisher (I later learnt he was from the American Embassy) told me: we are working on this challenge but U will have to co-operate with the authorities to make our work easy. Phew! I relented, plus the solitary confinement was actually killing me. The prison authorities collected my particulars that evening. And the Director of Public Prosecution was later to lose interest in my case: which was actually a simple larceny charge of chicken theft. I was released in early September and dumped at the Ugandan border and declared Persona Non Grata in Rwanda. On my release papers, the chicken theft charge had been changed to overstaying my visa (living in Rwanda illegally). Dont mind that I had been a bona fide Rwandan Citizen.
Posted on: Thu, 28 Aug 2014 10:29:30 +0000

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