Five roles, not one
Traditional medicine remains widely used in Rwanda, and it is more differentiated than outsiders expect. Practitioners fall into distinct roles: the umuvuzi (healer), the umupfumu (soothsayer), the umuhannyi (adviser), the umurozi (sorcerer) and the magendu — the unqualified operator nobody trusts. Each is understood to handle a different class of problem, and conflating them is the first mistake visitors make.
The plants
Healers work primarily with medicinal plants, alone or in combination with other substances. The most widely used is umuravumba (Iboza riparia), credited locally with acting against more than fifteen common complaints. On the visit the healer lays out the plants, trees and animal-derived materials he works with and explains how each is prepared and administered.
How the visit runs
You are received at the family home, usually with his wife, children and grandchildren present — the knowledge is family-held, and one of his daughters does much of the plant collection. He talks through his consulting tools and his diagnostic method, which is the part most visitors find genuinely surprising.
Treat this as an ethnobotany and belief-system visit, not a medical one. The interest is in how diagnosis and treatment are reasoned about, and how that sits alongside the formal health system that most Rwandans also use.
Where it fits
Short and easy to combine with anything else around Rubavu — the Kivu Coffee Tour or Dancing Pots make the natural pairing.