Gorilla Naming Ceremony

Yesterday Sarah arrived again for the Gorilla Naming Ceremony. Obviously another prospective nice weekend. Last night we went to have a drink at the new accommodation that we'd found the tour group in the week.

This morning we set off for Kinigi where ORTPN was hosting the 2nd Gorilla Naming Ceremony and 12 new gorilla babies since last year's ceremony would be named. Claude went with to keep an eye on the car during the ceremony.

On arrival we got a pleasant surprise being directed to some early tea, coffee and bites before the ceremony commenced. This was also an opportunity to catch up with some people we hadn't seen for a long time. Eventually the traditional dancing and drumming started as everyone made their way to their seats awaiting the arrival of the guests of honour. The President of Rwanda was unable to attend but the First Lady attended with the President of the Senate.

The speakers included the Minister under whom tourism falls, the Governor of the Northern Province and Rosette Rugamba, the Director-General of ORTPN. In the latter speech, Rosette referred to all the projects that had commenced and/or progressed from last year's ceremony and how some of the $1.4 million raised had been spent. Reference was also made to the new luxury community lodge in Kinigi that would be opening the end of the year and our project in Musanze and that we're planning to open June next year.

Two representatives from community projects also gave a brief rundown of what they were doing, one of them from the Beekeepers association in Kinigi. Then down to matter of naming the new baby gorillas. Ambassadors and representatives from various countries had also been invited to name some of the babies, amongst them the ambassadors from the USA, United Kingdom, Belgium and Netherlands and a representative from the city of Brussels. One of the sponsors, Rwandex (exporter of Rwandan coffee) also named their adopted baby and announced that this baby would become the face of one of their new products.

A representative from the DRC tourism/wildlife authority was also there to name a baby in one of their groups that had been born whilst the group was in Rwanda. It was great to hear that that the Rwanda and DRC governments had signed agreements on cross-border co-operation in conservation and in particular that of the gorillas.

After the ceremony all the guests were invited to attend a lunch nearby in marquee tents that had been set up. This turned out to be a fantastic lunch with more meetings with people we hadn't seen for a long time as well as testing the banana wine that had been put on all the tables - fairly strong too. We gave one of these little bottles of banana wine to Claude who told us that even by local standards it was very strong.

Another hugely successful day for ORTPN and for tourism in Rwanda in general.