When I met with Gregory Bakunzi recently at the Ninzi Hotel in Kigali, Rwanda, for this interview, I found him disarmingly soft-spoken, friendly and unassuming – the furthest thing one would expect from most successful business people.
Bakunzi’s “niceness” is perhaps borne out of his humble beginnings – growing up in a refugee camp in western Uganda and dropping out of school in Primary Seven due to lack of school fees.
His dignified demeanor can also be attributed to his career. As a tour guide for Amahoro Tours, his boutique tour and travel company, Bakunzi has spent many years interacting with people from diverse cultures.
“I have been to about 53 countries around the world and met and interacted with people from all walks of life. Along the way I have learned that it takes humility to deal with people of all kinds of personalities,” he says.
In his career that spans two decades, Bakunzi says most of his expeditions begin and end smoothly, but he has had to tolerate a few annoying clients. Like that American tourist who came “expecting Africa to be like America.”
Bakunzi says his client complained about everything during his entire visit – from the “bad roads” to “being driven in a car that lacked an air conditioner.”
“In fact,” says Bakunzi, “when he went back to the US he posted bad things about us (Amahoro Tours) on Trip Advisor, but our reply was diplomatic: we told him that this is Africa, not America.”
But such experiences are few, Bakunzi says, because most tourists understand the country they are visiting.
The beginning
Bakunzi’s fascination with wildlife began when he first encountered the unique mountain gorillas in Uganda’s Mgahinga Gorilla National Park in 1994 when he was still a teenage boy.
His interest in travel was further stoked by his foray into Rwanda in late 1994 when he first encountered the country’s beautiful landscapes, social distinctness, and the Virunga volcanoes.
“When I first came here I was fascinated by the fact that people in this country spoke the same language, especially considering that I was coming from a country (Uganda) where we spoke more than 50 languages,” he says.
Becoming a tour guide
Bakunzi’s career as a tour guide was set in motion in 1995 when a Ugandan tour operator friend of his began to send him tourists so that he could help guide them through Rwanda’s most amazing tourist destinations.
But it was not until 2001 that Bakunzi gained enough experience and the approval and confidence of a couple of tourists who had used his services.
“When I took one German tourist who was researching on community tourism in Rwanda to Lake Burera and he admitted to me that he was satisfied with my services, I realised that I could actually turn this thing into a bona fide business venture,” he says.
The German tourist, Michael Grosspietsch, encouraged Bakunzi to start a tour and travel company and also recommended other tourists to use his services while visiting Rwanda.
That was the turning point; from then on Bakunzi was determined to pursue a career in tourism.
He began by setting up Amahoro Tours, which he officially registered in 2002 and quickly found success. In its first year of operations, Amahoro Tours led seven trips. There were more than 10 the following year and things really started to buzz in the subsequent years.
By 2010, Bakunzi’s company was leading more than 30 expeditions per year and is now listed among Rwanda’s top 100 companies – certainly not a mean feat for a man with limited education.
Beginning as a one-man-show in 2002, Bakunzi first hired one tour guide in 2003 and now his company has 15 – six of whom are full-time staff and the rest part-time.
Nowadays Bakunzi leads a few expeditions himself – in a year he leads between two-four trips, “especially when the clients are foreign tour operators. That presents me with a chance to learn something from them,” he says.
The company’s trips are packaged like “a supermarket” because “every tourist has a private purpose for travel,” says Bakunzi. “They’ll say they want to see gorillas when in actual sense they are here for research or something else.”
Amahoro Tours’ packages are priced as all-inclusive (with the exception of air tickets and visas), and the company charges anywhere from $200 for village walks and visiting cultural sites.
Tours are not entirely focused on tourist attractions, Bakunzi says, so over the years he has had to educate himself a lot about Rwanda’s culture and history.
“Tourists want to know everything,” he says. “They want to know about Rwandan culture, history, the economy, politics and even about myself.”