Printer Friendly Version - Joshua Ruzibuka: Using Opportunity to Help Others

Joshua Ruzibuka’s path to America was filled with almost incomprehensible terrors. He’s now extending his gratitude for being safe with his family today by working to ensure shelter, safety, and schooling for kids and families in the Democratic Republic of Congo.Photo courtesy of Joshua Ruzibuka

Diners don’t often think about the person preparing their food behind the scenes when they eat at a restaurant. They peruse the menu, place their order, and a delicious meal arrives a short time later.

Those who eat at the Wharf Restaurant at Madison Beach Hotel in Madison might have the honor of enjoying a dish prepared by the cheerful and kind Joshua Ruzibuka, 29, who was recently awarded Hilton’s highest recognition, the CEO Light & Warmth Award. He was one of only 13 people around the world selected out of 650 employed by Hilton and Hilton-affiliated hotels who were nominated for the annual award.

“Really, I was surprised to get that award,” Joshua says. “I didn’t know I can get it. I was shocked. It was so amazing and it’s pushing me to do more, better things to support people and to help people. It was really amazing and I’m so happy. I just thank all those people and thank God to make me receive that award.”

Joshua is being recognized for outstanding work he’s done and continues to do to help fellow refugees here and back in Africa. Many have survived horror stories similar to his own.

Joshua was born in 1991 in Bukavu, a city in what was then the African country of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) bordering Rwanda. His parents and three sisters were murdered by home invaders while Joshua, who was five at the time, hid under a bed and escaped notice. He spent the next decade largely on his own, begging and rummaging through garbage for food, sleeping on the streets, and running from people who wanted to kill him.

It was, he says plainly, “a miserable life. It was not easy to make it. But I do just try to focus on what my mom told me before [she died], and then I keep all that in my mind. I was a kid and to grow up by myself at age five, no mom, no dad, it was not easy.”

Throughout his long ordeal, Joshua remembered his mother’s guidance: “‘Don’t steal any life, don’t do anything bad, be a good boy and then if you do that, I promise you, my son, you’re going to make it one day.’ I just focus on that and find how to eat, how to sleep,” he explains. “It was not really easy. I can say that my first day to sleep on a mattress was when I got to America.”

He adds, “When I remember my mom, I keep crying. She didn’t give me money, she didn’t leave me a car, a house, but she left the good voice to me which I can remember what she said, and that I focus my life. I work hard to make it, to make her proud.”

As a teen, he traveled as far as Dzaleka Refugee Camp in Malawi, well over a thousand miles away, to try to escape danger.

“I was moving a lot. Today I’m living in Rwanda, tomorrow I run, I’m going to Congo. They want to kill me in Congo, I go back to Rwanda,” he recalls. “I decide to live far from Congo and Rwanda, so I move to Malawi. I think that place is going to be safe. But when I get there, I find it is a terrible place. It is a miserable place to live because we have many, many refugees from everywhere and the fire I quit in Rwanda and Congo, I find it in Malawi.”

Again, his mother’s advice guided him. “She told me, ‘When you go anywhere, find a church. In the church, you’re going to find a mom, you’re going to find a dad. You’ll be better if you find a church.’”

Unfortunately, Joshua did not find the family or even the welcome he’d hoped for. He was rejected by every group, who decided he was not like them.

“When I say I’m going to sing, they don’t want me to go to the choir. When I want to just sit in the church, people don’t want to see me, so I decide to leave and decide I can start my own church,” he says.

“People come and we pray together. And then I saw one pastor say, ‘I can train you, I can teach you how you can start to lead these people,’ and it was really amazing,” he says. “People from America and from abroad come into the refugee camp to train people who like to be pastors or evangelists.”

“I was the leader already, and then I open church!” he exclaims proudly. “The church is named Penuel Church. After opening Penuel Church, many people follow me when I preach, when we pray, so when I come in America, I was already pastor.”

In 2013, after many years of trying, he was finally granted refugee status in the U.S. His now-wife, Sandra Kasongo, whom he met at Dzaleka Refugee Camp, won refugee status at the same time and they were soon reunited in New Haven.

In a new place again, he once again did what his mother advised—found a church. This one was called First Baptist Church in his new city of New Haven. Many other Congolese and Rwandan refugees he met followed him there, he says. He not only helped them find a place to worship, but he also helps other refugees with necessities like clothes, food, rides, finding jobs, and navigating their new culture and surroundings.

A video the church posted of its Sunday service on May 9 shows Joshua in a red, button-down collared shirt, black bowtie, and light gray blazer at a pulpit a few feet away from the Reverend David Reed-Brown, who pauses frequently during his English sermon so Joshua can translate it into Swahili for the church’s many African congregants. Joshua’s native language is Swahili, but he can speak French, Lingala, Kinyarwanda, and Chichewa.

Asked about the service that day, Joshua happily explains that Congolese service takes place when the English one ends at noon, and then when that ends at 2 p.m., he heads to work at Madison Beach Hotel.

Joshua begins his work week on Wednesday, which he says is his favorite day of the week “because my kids are safe, my wife is home, and now I can go to work. I’m really free and I have that energy on Wednesday to go back to work.”

Sandra graduated from Gateway Community College and is a CNA at Yale New Haven Hospital. Their son, Eldad, is six and their daughter, Elsa, is about 18 months old. Joshua became a U.S. citizen in the summer of 2019 and Sandra will become one soon, Joshua says.

Joshua plans to return to Africa in November. A trip in April 2020 was canceled due to the pandemic. He plans to be a missionary and continue helping people, dividing his time however he can between Africa and the U.S. He and Sandra are working out the details.

Last May, from afar and with the help of others he lived with at Dzaleka Refugee Camp in Malawi, Joshua started Kabumba School in his birthplace of Bukavu, Democratic Republic of Congo. He contributed half of his Hilton award money to the school. The other half is going toward building a church in Malawi near Dzaleka Refugee Camp, and another school in Lubumbashi, the second-largest city in Democratic Republic of Congo.

“I remember when I was a little kid, I’m passing in this place, I pass like this, I’m supposed to die. Now look, I’m in America!” he says. “I sleep, when I wake up, I can eat. I’m so happy, America has a lot of food!”

He reflects on the fact that he started as a dishwasher and is now a line cook working with an abundance of food he never dreamed of when he was a kid. Maybe for that reason, Joshua most enjoys cooking kids’ food like chicken nuggets, hotdogs, and hamburgers.

“It’s a dream how I can cook!” he says—his favorite food to eat? “Steak!”

Asked if there’s anything else he wants readers to know, he says, “To thank so much First Baptist Church and Madison Beach Hotel. Mr. John [Mathers], the manager, he’s really a good person. He lets people know Joshua. I thank that man all my life. He’s a good person to me.”

“I need people to support my vision,” he says. “Really, I’m happy to be in America, I thank God to protect me, but for my vision to help people—widows, orphans in the village in Africa—I want to go far, but I need support. If I get support, I can do more than I’m doing. If we have money, we can have nice schools. We can have a nice house for those kids to live, and we can have transportation to go to meet those people in the village. So we need money and we need people who can support ideas.”