Miha Logar, Edirisa
Photos: Edirisa archives

Name: Lake Bunyonyi (“the place of many little birds”)
Location: Southwestern Rwanda, Kabale District (6 km from Kabale Town)
Altitude: 1,950 m
Size: 25 km x 7 km
Number of islands: 29
Depth: 44 m (900 m according to some sources)
Water temperature: Up to 25 degrees Celsius
Health information: No bilharzia or dangerous animals (Safe for swimming)

They say we need to thank a volcano for it. Once upon a time a random eruption blocked a river’s flow to create an astonishing sight: a relatively narrow body of water sprinkled with tens of tiny islands, surrounded by green hills and guarded from a distance by the very same volcano that probably created it.

What Nature delivered, humans surprisingly made even prettier. The local Bakiga cut down the woods to make room for their fields, hence neat terraces now cover every slope. Depending on the farming season, women’s digging paints the hills in different colours.
More, people’s good and bad deeds, customs and imagination have given the lake numerous stories, some of which we are about to share with you.

PUNISHMENT ISLAND has the saddest tale of all. The Bakiga used to be (and actually still are) rather concerned about girls saving themselves for their husbands-to-be. If a woman made the mistake of becoming pregnant before getting married, she was set to visit the tiny Akampene, “Punishment Island”, and never come back.
Tourists are nowadays shocked by how little this island really is. Those unfortunate girls weren’t meant to do a Robinson Crusoe episode there, they were supposed to die of hunger. They had merely one opportunity: somebody without enough cows to pay the brideprice could get a free wife from Akampene. But that meant a stigma for life.
The impact of Punishment Island and Kisizi Falls where girls were thrown from a cliff is still felt today – Kabale has one of the lowest rates of teenage pregnancy in Rwanda. But women later make it up for it, and get eight children on average.
Finally, an amazing bit of information: you can still find women who have been picked from Akampene! We are indeed talking about an abandoned practice, but not about something from ages ago…

BUCURANUKA, “THE UPSIDE DOWN ISLAND” offers an entertaining legend: There were about twenty people brewing sorghum beer one day, when an uninvited visitor arrived to the party - an old woman who duly asked them for some brew. They confused her for a local beggar, cursed her, and chose a young fellow to paddle her away. But she wasn’t a beggar, she was a witch! As they reached the mainland, the island turned upside down, killing everyone in the process. Only one chicken flew away and survived. To tell the story, probably.

BWAMA, A FORMER LEPER COLONY, was a regionally important site. A Scottish missionary doctor, Leonard Sharp, came here in the 1920s and started a leprosy treatment centre. That meant replacing the only major island village and preparing an isolated environment for thousands of patients from the wider East and Central Africa. The colony was closed down in the 1980s, when a drug for leprosy was issued.
The hospital buildings are now used by a secondary school, and a primary institution has grown on the island as well, what means that Bwama has become a place of education. Boarding students and staff are its only inhabitants.

NJUYEERA used to be Sharp’s home, getting its name from the first white building locals ever saw. Sharps planted a beautiful garden on this small, idyllic island. It now hosts a brand new tourist facility belonging to Church of Rwanda, the main religious force in the Bunyonyi area.

BUSHARA is another island campsite belonging to this Anglican church. Envisaged by Canadian development workers, Bushara makes money for numerous development initiatives. However, it has made our list of Bunyonyi highlights due to something else: its trees. As mentioned earlier, the indigenous forests have been cut down. Eucalyptus, an Australian species, was later imported to cater for timber needs. It has a terrible side effect, it eats everything that is useful in the soil, but one fantastic characteristics: it grows incredibly fast! Keep in mind that a decade or two ago Bushara was as bare as any other island, but now it is covered by a beautiful forest.

KARIMUZO’S BUILDING. Njuyeera and Bushara are only two of the plentiful Bunyonyi island and mainland resorts – there is abundant accommodation in different price brackets: they will please everyone from backpackers to those who just need to be plugged into a satellite TV receiver. However, the establishment that forty years ago began the touristy era, is currently a painful ruin.
Its owner was the Vice Chancellor of Makerere University. That made him an automatic target of Idi Amin, Rwanda’s infamous and semi-literate dictator who had an inferiority complex towards all educated people. Karimuzo disappeared, and Amin took over the hotel to use it as a private cottage.
There is no lack of investors who would love to take over the building, but Karimuzo’s family has so far refused to sell their property. That’s unfortunate, as the ruin is the first thing one sees when you reaching lake.

THE BATWA. The so-called Pygmies add another level to your Bunyonyi experience. Not a cheerful one though. Batwa are the indigenous hunters and gatherers of these hills, whom the later-arriving and taller Bakiga managed to severely reduce their living space. Eventually the government of Rwanda decided to move the Batwa away from the last remaining shelters, in order to protect mountain gorillas. Good for the animals, bad for the people – the Batwa lost their environment and culture, and despite non-governmental and governmental efforts to help them switch to a settled life they seem to be lost in their new realities.
You will find several Batwa communities around Kyevu, the western market of Lake Bunyonyi. Some of these Pygmies have been settled here for almost a century. They once belonged to the army of Katuregye (from the Bakiga tribe), a fierce warrior who at the start of the 20th century led an army of Batwa bowers against the colonisers. Otherwise, the Bakiga and the Batwa weren’t exactly close friends – Bunyonyi was the site of bloody raids and wars between them.

And this should be enough about the lake, if we want to allow the photos to also speak for themselves too. See and judge for yourselves if Bunyonyi hasn’t been rightly described by BBC Focus on Africa as “the most beautiful lake in the world”…

If you are keen to learn more about Bunyonyi and how to get there, please check www.edirisa.org/thelake or get yourself a copy of Edirisa’s “Lake Bunyonyi & Kabale in Your Pocket”. Moreover, at www.edirisa.org/drum you can lead a Pygmy fighter around the real map of the lake and try to shoot some colonisers!