Kwita Izina: Another first-class Rwandan concept

On Saturday the world, represented by a diverse cross-section of people who had come from near and far, participated in the Rwanda Office of Tourism and National Parks (ORTPN)-organised Gorilla-naming, or Kwita Izina ceremony. This is a function, like Swaziland’s famous Reed Dance, or Umhlanga, that has blended tradition and modern necessity, to sensitise people in the vicinity of gorilla habitats, that it pays to be friends, not enemies, of these endangered species of the animal kingdom. It pays because the world does not wish gorillas to become next on the list of extinct species, and so it pays to conserve them and their environment.