Kwita Izina and Lake Kivu

This weekend I went to a unique ceremony here in Rwanda called “Kwita Izina.”   Kwita Izina is the baby gorilla naming ceremony and the name literally means to name someone. One of Rwanda’s biggest tourist attractions is its population of mountain gorillas and the annual Kwita Izina has been very successful in promoting their conservation.

I went with my friends Laura and Devin. Laura and I arrived at the bus at 6am on Saturday morning for our departure and realized our other friends weren’t on board. So Laura jumped off the bus to go find them and the driver took off with all of her stuff and me on board. He eventually just dropped me off on the side of the road and I took a moto back to the bus stop where we caught a 6:15 bus. Turns out the others had caught an earlier bus and failed to mention it. But we made quite a scene in the process, and the story proceeded us to our friends waiting in Ruhengeri.

The event was wonderfully conducted. There were traditional Rwandan dances and dramatic performances. The prime minister spoke, as well as several other government officials. And finally, the 18 people chosen to name the baby gorillas came up. Apparently the park rangers had previously submitted a list of names for each gorilla based on the characteristics they had observed, and then the chosen namer picked one. Each of the people nominated were there for some contribution they had made to the cause, or the country, or even the continent. I can’t remember all of the names, but I know one meant “surprise” I think because the Momma gorilla hadn’t had a baby in a while. There were no actual baby gorillas in attendance, but they had people dressed up in gorilla suits rolling around and pretending to be primates.

   

  

The gorilla park is in a range of five volcanoes. It was a beautiful setting.

  

After the ceremony we had a delicious lunch with nice food and drinks. And I met Jack Hanna! I pretty much stalked him. But he was quite nice, and apparently some of his family is from Arkansas. He invited us to his veterinarian party, but we politely declined.

After the event, we decided to go to Gisenye and Lake Kivu with another group. We had a terrifying near-accident on the bus on the way there. This dump truck came flying down the mountain in the middle of the road and we had to pull completely off to miss hitting him head-on. Thankfully, we were driving on the mountainside, not the drop-off edge side. Anyway, we made it safely, had a few housing situations to deal with, finally got our room and discovered a TV! None of us had watched TV in so long that we were even able to deal with the miserable Disney teen movies on.

The next day we visited the public beach in Gisenye on the banks of Lake Kivu (a fresh water lake that borders both DRC and Rwanda). 

Laura and Devin capturing the moment

Then we went to the Serena Hotel down the street and sat on the side of the lake and had some lunch.  Later we made our way back to Kigali with much less excitement than the first trip. All in all it was an adventurous weekend.