Kibuye, Rwanda

The town of Kibuye lies next to Lake Kivu, a large, remote and undeveloped lake between Rwanda and Congo. Connecting the capital city of Kigali and the lakeside oasis of Kibuye is a long and winding road built by the Chinese. It snakes its way through villages and mountains, plantations of sugar cane and bananas. The forests of the mountains are carved up by lush terraced gardens. The woods are separated by neat square patches of cassava and vegetable gardens surrounding the occasional adobe hut. If you had been blindfolded and dropped here, perhaps you would imagine you were in the famous terraced hills of East Asia. Such serene and pastoral images are not usually reserved for Africa.

When the snaking road reaches it pinnacle, the valleys of banana trees and sugar cane slink between mountains and at a fabulous bend in the road there lies a crystal-clear lake as far as you can see. If you stare hard past the lake at the clouds on the skyline, on a clear day you just might be able to make out a volcano rising from the horizon. The mountains of Colorado, the lakes of my home state of Michigan, the rocky islands of the Philippines, it is as though all the beauty in nature I’ve ever seen was gathered right into this one place.
This is the guesthouse in Kibuye where I spent two nights.

While my stay in Rwanda was short (about 3 nights or so), it was certainly not short on experiences. I’m sure that Lake Kivu was the most beautiful place I’ve been in my life. And yet, I do not speak Kinyarwanda or French so it was terribly difficult to get around. I spent a lot of time inwardly cursing the education system in the U.S.

It also became clear that people were walking around hiding a great deal of pain. On the one hand, the amount of development that Rwanda has been able to accomplish in a little over ten years since the genocide is truly amazing. On the other hand, it sometimes feels like problems are being swept under the rug. For example, when you ask about the progress since the genocide, people embarrassedly give pat answers like “we are no longer Hutu or Tutsi, only Rwandese.” While this is wonderful in theory, but have the issues since the genocide truly been dealt with? Rwanda was a country whose measure of stability were all increasing. Income indicators, agricultural progression and education was all increasing, so what happened? Some people I talked to were skeptical that the underlying issues had really been resolved.

The people of Rwanda were incredible, those that were nice were the most helpful and hospitable people I’ve ever met, sometimes I ended up feeling a victim to their endless hospitality. Others, however, were some of my least favorite individuals I’ve met since coming to Africa. The man in front of me in the Matatu (taxi van) smacked a woman in the face over a dialogue they were having. Her male companion, in turn, required a bit of calming down by the other passengers in order not to lash out at the first man. Later I saw two mechanics at the bus park having an all-out fistfight. Maybe it was just a coincidence, but I suspect that there is a lot of un-dealt with angst just below the surface, waiting to erupt.

A common theme from my travels (and perhaps my life) is that I remain unsure of whether and how much to give in to my natural inclination to process the situation I’m in or to let go and just experience. This struggle was confounded in Rwanda. It was certainly strange traveling to such a place by myself, and it left my head ringing with unshared thoughts and feelings.

One last image to share:
On a peninsula overlooking the lake is a beautiful church. Again, the idyllic setting is impossible to describe accurately. While I was there, a small group of men and women were harmonizing and singing an African hymn. It was carried and echoed around the mountain by the calm of the water. A small addition has been built in front of the church. At first glimpse it looks like perhaps a courtyard or a church cemetery. But, if it is a cemetery it is an usual one because there are no grave stones.

A closer inspection reveals a plaque next to the concrete. Between 11,000 and 15,000 bodies are buried underneath the unmarked concrete. During the genocide, the area around Kibuye saw nearly 90% of its population wiped out. Many of them are buried here. Behind the cross, at the front of the courtyard, is bold lettering, an inscription in Kinyarwanda. Beneath the lettering there is glass at the front of the shrine, ordinarily where pictures or a brief explanation would be printed. Instead, carefully preserved behind the glass, the front of the courtyard hosts skulls and the long femurs and arm bones that are distinctively human. These are remnants from what once filled the church.

I wish I had some tidy way to wrap this up. Sometimes I wish that the work I was doing here lined up more directly with my passion for trauma-healing. I guess this is why I want to go back to school for a Masters in clinical Social Work, so I can come back to places like Rwanda and Northern Uganda and hopefully help people deal with some of the unfathomable things they’ve experienced. In the meantime, please continue to pray. Pray for my work here, and my decisions for the future. Pray for the people of the Diocesan office and the entire Diocese of Lango. Pray for lasting peace and security in Northern Uganda, for the work of CRWRC in Uganda and all over the world.