Dr. Chris Kibonge lived and worked in the Republic of South Africa before moving to Burns Lake to continue his medical career. A friend and colleague of his immigrated to Mackenzie B.C. two years previously and encouraging emails about the warm reception he received in the small northern Canadian community persuaded Dr. Kibonge to give Burns Lake a try.
"For the last three or four years, I have been wanting to move to Canada," he said, "I wanted a safe place to raise my family. There is a lot of violence in South Africa," he noted.
Dr. Kibonge is not aware of any active recruitment campaign to bring doctors to Canada from South Africa. For him it is just a coincidence that there has been so many of his countrymen through Burns Lake in the last while.
Dr. Kibonge studied in Zaire, South Africa, as a student where he graduated as a general practitioner. He worked there for a few years with the World Health Organization and also with Doctors Without Borders, where he concentrated on the deadly disease Human African trypanosomiasis, commonly know as 'sleeping sickness', which is transmitted by the tsetse fly.
In 2002 Dr. Kibonge moved to the rural-industrial town of Whitbank, South Africa, where he completed his masters in family medicine and practiced for the next several years until immigrating recently to British Columbia.
Accompanying the doctor are his wife and three children; a daughter of 14, and two sons, aged eight and 10.
His wife is a qualified information technology engineer, he says, who hopes to begin nursing studies after taking time to settle in their new surroundings.
Dr. Kibonge says they are all looking forward to exploring their new environment. "I don't know how to fish yet," he chuckled, "I'm really looking forward to learning how to fish."
He likes tennis and golf and would like to take to the air for a look around the country. "I'm really passionate about flying, I would like to see the area from the air in a float plane when I get the time," he said.
That might be a while, as he is the only full-time physician in town right now, and although he is 'quite busy' he does not mind the work load just yet. "Ask me again in a year and see if the answer has changed by then," he laughed.
Northern Health spokesperson confirmed that Burns Lake has three part time doctors, one full time doctor, Dr. Kibonge and a nurse practitioner.
He has been here for about eight weeks now and says he and his family are wondering what the effect of the Canadian winter will be on them.
"I'm still waiting for the snow," Dr. Kibonge smiled, "when we first arrived here one of my sons said, 'Where is the snow? I can't see the snow from here!