08.08.2011
Kibuye’s many wonders Paul’s bike allowed us to check out every corner of Kibuye and nothing we experienced was ever mentioned in any guidebook. For instance a driving instructor, who had his own way of showing us that driving lessons in Rwanda are serious business! He kneeled on the seat, had the clutch fastened with a small rope and maneuvered the bike with one hand through a narrow slalom of traffic cones. The noise and exhaust fumes coming from the tortured bike were brutal, but he succeeded, throwing a kiss when he passed the last cone, his students and us cheered him like a hero. Driving schools in Rwanda almost exclusively aim at motorbikes. Practice takes place in a flat terrain. A tight slalom of traffic cones is set up and students are required to drive through without getting off. Also a photo stop in the small port took a funny turn. Boats with long outriggers, so unique for Lake Kivu, swayed gently on the water. Although they reminded me of gigantic spiders, the setting sun made them look spectacular by dipping them into a romantic glow. Like arranged for our photo session, a fisherman used the outriggers to balance from boat to boat. For a few dollars he rowed us into the sunset, singing the chants the local fishermen use to find the rhythm for rowing the big boats as a team. We felt like true winners. The bike was left under the watchful eyes of some kids who were beaming with pride that Paul entrusted them with his transport. The only let down was our trip to the methane plant that experiments with extracting the vast store of methane for energy use. There is really nothing there to see, except the administration building, a real eyesore. Whoever allowed this high rise to be built right on this untouched pristine shoreline should be tarred and feathered. Not even the local EWSA station (Rwandan company that distributes water & power) on top of a hill escaped our attention. The armed guide enjoyed the distraction and allowed us to take photos of the lake below. Pasqual, an accountant for EWSA, who stayed at Hotel Bethanine, filled us in on the rest. He briefed us relentlessly on Rwanda’s energy and economic situation, how to stay healthy and how important it was to be a good Christian. Never did he mention how he lost his right arm. We were too embarrassed to ask. Only the last evening, he allowed us a little glimpse into his life. As a son of a Tutsi family, who left Rwanda right after the very first attacks on Tutsis in 1959, he had grown up in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Pasqual raved about the beauty of the eastern Congo, the fertile fields and the large amounts of milk produced by happy Congolese cows. He made the Congo sound like the Garden of Eden. Only one sentence referred to Rwanda’s darkest history. “In 1994, I returned with a gun”. The genocide is omnipresent in Rwanda. In Kibuye, it was Pasqual and the Genocide Memorial, a church, where 10.000 Tutsis were slaughtered. But Pasqual is also a fine example of the impressive path back to recovery. He finished his education after the war, got married and holds a responsible job. |