RWANDA SETS SEPTEMBER DATE FOR KWITA IZINA 2015
(Posted 29th May 2015)
The Rwanda Development Board’s Tourism and Conservation Department has just confirmed that their annual Festival of the Gorillas, Kwita Izina, will this year take place on the 05th September instead of the hitherto usual date in the second half of June.
The weeklong conservation festival, with events from Kigali to often key tourism locations in the country, usually ends with a grand function in Kinigi near the park headquarters of the Volcanoes National Park with the naming of newborn gorillas, each of whom is named by invited guests and then ‘followed’ for life by the park administration.
Hundreds of additional visitors from around the world stream to Rwanda every year for this event to witness, applaud and support the country’s extraordinary conservation efforts and either before the main event or afterwards then track gorillas but also visit other parts of the country. The shores of Lake Kivu are just an hour’s drive from Musanze, the town nearest to Kinigi, and from there can the islands but also forests of Gishwati and Nyungwe be explored.
(This correspondent seen naming Omutungo, the only near adult female ever coming up for naming after joining a gorilla family in Rwanda, reportedly having left a non-habituated group in Congo)
RDB’s corporate communications department will in due course release the programme for the 2015 Kwita Izina Festival which will include sporting and conservation events and, perhaps the launch of new tourism products Rwanda is planning to introduce at that time. As the saying goes, watch this space to get the latest update information from what is happening in the region.
