Baraza

Category: Gorillas | Date: Jun 23 2008 | By: admin

This is part of a series of posts about our trip in Rwanda. It has been so exciting and there is so much to tell you that I don’t know where to start….Ok, I’ll start with Saturday’s naming ceremony

When we arrived the venue for the ceremony was already packed with thousands of local people. The setting is amazing - that’s mount Karasoke behind.

We were witnessing the naming - which Craig Hatkoff one of our Dierctors of WildlifeDirect and my co-author in Owen and Mzee, and his daughter Juliana were lucky enough to actually participate and name a gorilla. The baby they named was called “Mushye” which means ‘new’. I’m going to get her to do a guest post about the experience - so watch out for that post coming soon… for now just imagine yourself emersed amongst about 4000 people and the sounds of an African celebration….

The music and fanfare was absolutely mindblowing… here are some photos to get you into the mood -you will just have to imagine the loud African beat, the energy, the celebration. It was absolutely incredible.

The dancers had so much energy it was hard to sit still while they performed

One of the key stars of the ceremony was Oliver Ngoma from Gabon after naming his gorilla he was asked to give us a taste of his music described as Afro-zouk reggae… he sang a couple of song to the entire audience, a teaser for a major concert in the evening. Everyone was dancing in their seats!

I couldn’t resist it… so I took advantage of the opportunity to get a shot with the star himself! WOW! He is seriously famous in Africa, ….

On Sunday we went on a gorilla trek …apart from it being the out-of-this-world experience that everyone who has ever met a gorilla has, something particularly unusual and special happened to Craig. I have to download photos and podcast … it’l be in my next post. Hope you can wait!

Tags: , Craig Hatkoff, karasoke, Kwita Izina, mountain gorillas, Rwanda, Volcanoes, wildlifedirect

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