Caravan tour to mark this year’s ‘Kwita Izina’

A week-long caravan tour will be part of the activities to mark next month’s baby gorilla naming ceremony, locally known as Kwita Izina, in Kinigi, Musanze District. The tour, from Kigali to Kinigi will see tourists passing by the different tourism attractions and community projects on that route. Unveiling this year’s Kwita Izina programme, Rica Rwigamba, the head of Tourism and Conservation at the Rwanda Development Board (RDB), said everyone will be able to register and hop on the bus a week before the naming ceremony for the tour. “This is an event that is being co-organised by Amahoro tours from the private sector, but for us this is an opportunity for tourists. There are a lot of features in that area and Kwita Izina is a highlight,” Rwigamba said. She said in spite of the park permit fees increase last year to $750 (about Rwf480,000), there should be no worries of the kind this time as price changes usually have to be approved by the stakeholders first. Other events to feature in this year’s ceremony include community celebrations and launch of community projects. “This is a celebration of these wonderful animals but also a way to thank all those who take care of them, starting from rangers, vets and the community living near their habitat,” she said. According to Elizabeth Nyirakaragire, a veterinary warden, nine gorillas have died in the past year due to sickness, fights among the gorillas themselves and poachers among other reasons. Nyirakaragire told this paper that they follow up 18 gorilla families comprising of 293 gorillas on a daily basis and that 12 baby gorillas and one family will be named during the ceremony. The Gorilla wonderRwanda now shares revenues earned under the trans-boundary collaboration with DR Congo and Uganda. In 2012, Rwanda received 28,448 tourists in the Virunga National Park, 26,904 of whom visited mountain gorillas. Since 2005, when the revenue sharing programme started, over Rwf500m has been provided by the RDB to finance development projects around the Volcanoes National Park. Through the tourism revenue sharing scheme, RDB funds various community projects throughout the country. This year, a maize mill and a women’s maize production cooperative near Nyungwe National Park will be commissioned at the event. The naming ceremony will be conducted under the theme: ‘Celebrating Nature, Empowering Communities’ with emphasis on the role that the community plays in conservation. Rwigamba said the women’s cooperative grinding machine has increased their maize production and enabled beneficiaries to supply maize flour throughout the area.