Weekend in Kibuye

Friday afternoon, after finishing up our interviews, we left the clinic a little early to head back to the volunteer house to pack for a weekend trip to Kibuye. We had heard from other volunteers and RVCP members that Kibuye, which borders Lake Kivu, is beautiful and a good place to vacation for a weekend. Lake Kivu is located in the Western province of Rwanda and extends past the border into the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is considered one of the Great Lakes of Africa and is also one of the three “exploding lakes” in the world due to volcanic activity. For more information on the lake, I recommend wikipedia as a scholarly and reliable resource.

So Friday afternoon, tickets in hand, we walked over to the bus station and attempted to board a bus to Gitarama (where we would catch another bus to Kibuye). As we approached it, we were pushed to the side and told to wait. At that point, an older Rwandan man approached me and told me to buy a bus ticket (apparently I looked lost and confused to him). I tried to tell him as clearly as I could that we had already purchased them, using a series of simple gestures to emphasize my point. He insisted on directing me towards to station office, uttering, “buy ticket, buy ticket there,” at which point I responded that I had one and was waiting to get on the bus. After about five minutes of this exchange, I gave up, and walked back towards the rest of my group members who were clearly amused by my how unaware I was that my message had been lost in translation right as the conversation had began. Admittedly, it was not my first attempt of the trip to “converse” with someone who knew absolutely no English, all of which began and ended awkwardly and consisted of mostly desperate gestures. 

The bus to Gitarama arrived shortly after and, upon boarding, I was surprised by how comfortable and spacious it was (we realized shortly after this leg of the trip that this mode of transport was a false hope for what was to come). The bus glided effortlessly over rolling hills and I watched the dusty, flat roads of Butare morph into paved streets, overlooking coffee and maize farms that extended as far as I could see. As I stared out the window, I lost myself in the scenery as the undulating melodies of Rogue Wave and the Shins on my ipod harmonized with the movements of the bus over the hills. 

Abruptly we came to a stop, and I heard the murmur of passengers in the front and some faint laughter. A woman practically jumped off the bus and ran over to the woods. In case we hadn’t picked up on the fact that the woman was carsick, a man to the right of our group said in a very model sounding French accent, “she’s going to vomit.” We burst out laughing, as the situation was pretty clear to us without the English translation. Some things always translate. 

As soon as everyone was back inside, the bus continued to Gitarama. We were dropped off on the side of the road at what looked like a strip mall with no buses in sight. Using gestures with a couple of the shopkeepers, we managed to find our way to the station which was filled with old 1970s tour buses, refurbished to act as taxis to the neighboring villages.   We were directed towards a bus that was already filled (or so it appeared) with passengers. Regina and Caleb were lucky enough to locate one seat and the guy motioned for them to share it. I was directed towards the back of the bus (where 4 people were already seated) into a small space that could not have been larger than 6 inches. Sitting in the back of a tour bus for 3 hours in a quarter seat was not exactly the experience I was hoping for so I managed to get myself out of the bus, hoping to get at least a third of a seat if I waited. Sure enough, Amanda and I were directed into the seat with Caleb and Regina as two boys climbed through the open window into the 6-inch seat I was previously directed towards in the back. I have no idea what the capacity of that bus was but I’m pretty sure it was less than the 22 people we fit into it. As the last of the passengers struggled to situate themselves on top of other passengers we shut the doors and the driver headed out for the main road.

After about 2 hours of winding streets and bumpy, unpaved roads we arrived in Kibuye. We were greeted by a motorcycle driver who offered to take us all to a nice hotel for a very cheap fare. The driver, whose name we learned was Ignatius, was kind and spoke English very well. After dropping us off at the hotel, he gave us his cell phone number so we could call him whenever we needed a ride into town.

The hotel, called the Bettany, offered two types of rooms. The first type for 10,000 Francs a night was very similar to what we had in Butare. The second type, for 30,000 a night was like a palace. The expensive rooms were situated in a large four-story house, overlooking the lake. Walking into the building, I was greeted by marble floors and air conditioning, both of which seemed foreign to me after a week of what I considered, “luxurious camping,” in the volunteer house. The bathroom itself looked like something fit for Paul Kagame and I smiled at the thought of being able to use a real shower. It all seemed too good to be true, but we decided, without “reservations,” to book the room for two nights.

As you can probably already see from my last post, the room was too good to be true. While we were there, the hotel experienced a problem with their water and the lovely marble and granite shower served no other purpose but as something to admire. Because half of our room was useless to us, Amanda and I decided to move into the 10,000 RFW room on second night, trading our tempurpedic mattresses for cushioned boards and air conditioning for a mosquito nets.

Side note: I would like to admit something that most people reading this would never imagine of me. I managed to fit everything for three days into one backpack. One small Northface backpack, nothing else. I understand that packing light is not exactly something that most people associate me with, so I just had to throw that one out there. 

Our trusted driver, Ignatius, met us the following morning and took us around town. He ended up staying with us the whole day, and we all really enjoyed talking to him and hearing his stories. We learned that he was a Congolese refugee and had recently come to Kibuye to work in order to provide for his wife and five kids. He and his family had spent a significant amount of time in a refugee camp near Kibuye and he told us that the living conditions there were horrible and that he was funneling all the money he could make into getting his family out of the camp. I was so amazed that, despite everything he had been through, Ignatius was constantly smiling and willing to show us around while expecting nothing in return except for a small motorcycle fare. During the day he took us out to a small island where we were able to swim. All I could think was that it was three hours he could have been driving people around and he chose to forgo that to help us out. After taking us around, we invited him back to the hotel to have lunch with us. It was the least we could do after all of the help he had provided and we knew from before that he would rarely be able to eat more than one meal a day after buying food for his family and paying the rental fee for his motorcycle. Listening to him talk and hearing his stories of how he was rejected from jobs because of his refugee status (even though he knew five languages that he had taught himself and spoke English better than anyone else I had met from Rwanda), I felt like I had entered into a movie or a novel. His story seemed unreal, and yet the experiences he spoke of were so incredibly potent.

On Sunday we had breakfast in the morning and headed back towards Kibuye to catch the bus home. Ignatius was at church, so we decided to walk to the town instead of taking a motorcycle. About a mile outside of the town, we saw him approaching us on his motorbike, grinning. He told us that he had his family and wife with him in town and that they wanted to personally thank us for the little bit of money we had given him the previous day for all of his help. He even brought us a picture of his family with a thank you note written on the back. Receiving that note and all the gratitude that was behind it was one of the most incredible experiences of the trip so far, and something I will always remember.

His five children were very shy but incredibly sweet. We took a couple of pictures with them but his youngest child, Norbert, was very afraid of the camera (you can tell from the pictures- he is hiding behind the motorcycle). Even though they were young, I could tell that they understood how far the little bit of money that we gave him would go. We all have Ignatius’ email address now and I hope that he continues to update us on his life and it progresses, and hopefully, becomes easier.

I can’t say that the ride back to Butare was that eventful after a crazy weekend. Again we were crunched in the back of the van and again the driver drove so fast to the point where I was almost convinced we were going to drive off the edge of the curving road. We did come across a van, similar to our own, that had flipped on the side of the road. Our driver pulled over and people began to murmur things quietly and stare. Nervous that some people might have been hurt, I asked the first person that passed our bus if everyone was Ok. “No one been died,” he replied. It was good enough for me. Our driver continued at a much slower pace towards Butare.