My Love for Kibuye, RW

This weekend I'm heading to Kibuye.

If you've been, you already know. If you haven't, it's the kind of place that makes you question why you ever spend time anywhere else in Rwanda. Lake Kivu sits there like it has nothing to prove. The hills rolling into the water. The air feels different the moment you arrive.

The drive alone — two, maybe three hours from Kigali — is half the experience. Rwanda, through a windshield, is its own kind of painting. Every bend in the road reveals something worth stopping for. I rarely stop. But I remember all of it.

The plan this time is simple. A good Airbnb by the lake (I'll always take a well-chosen Airbnb over a hotel for a trip like this — I wrote about why here), a campfire, a sunset, and no real agenda beyond walking around and letting the place do what it does. That's it. That's enough.

These are the moments that feed the Thank You Rwanda series.

I started this body of work because I wanted to document my time in Rwanda honestly — not as a visitor with a camera, but as someone who has made this place part of his life. Rwanda has given me landscapes I hadn't seen before. Roads I hadn't driven. Water I hadn't sat beside. Painting is how I hold onto that. A photograph captures the moment. A painting captures how the moment felt.

Kibuye is my favourite place in Rwanda. Getting to paint from that specific memory — the fire, the lake at dusk, the quality of light that only exists there — makes this weekend more than a trip. It's research. It's documentation. It's the work.

I'll be back Monday with paint ideas and probably a few reference photos. For now, the bag is almost packed.