Category: History & Culture
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Our Stories:
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Spotlight on Batwa Potters (and Ramadhan’s Clay Zoo)
Say hi to Ramadhan Ntaganira from Coopérative Moderne de Poterie in Ngaruyinka, a village on the outskirts of Kigali. He is the most artistic of our Batwa friends who make a living there. Yesterday he showed off a hippo and a gorilla of his own making, perched on a giant chicken he had created too.…
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Ask for Teacher, Pour Some Beer
Ask anyone in Bufuka, our little village on a Lake Bunyonyi peninsula, for “Teacher” and you won’t get directions to the primary school. You’ll be pointed to a home filled with laughter, chat, and the smell of obushera, the local brew. That’s where you’ll find Meble Kyarimpa, a 58-year-old grandmother of five. She’s never stood…
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Cape Town: Third Time, Slovenian Charm
See the ship bathing in the sunset light over my left shoulder? Not far from it lies the Cape Town International Convention Centre, where your ML Rwebandira took to the panel on Monday, 13 April 2026. Oh yes, it worked! It felt pretty unbelievable: I knocked yet again on the door of South Africa, with only…
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24 Hours to 25 Years — Join Us Online
This frame from our Treasures exhibition looks back a quarter of a century, to the moment when Edirisa — the mother of the Gorilla Highlands idea — was unveiled to an equatorial community on 20 February 2001. * * * That’s why we travelled to Lake Bunyonyi this morning — Diana and Sasha from Rwanda, Elie from…
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Listening to the Batwa, Not the Noise Around Them
With the imposing Virunga volcanoes on the horizon, the tapestry of Echuya Central Forest Reserve becomes even more striking. Once upon a time, this was all one uninterrupted woodland expanse, but some 400 years ago Bantu farmers split what is now Mgahinga Gorilla National Park from Echuya. Our partners, the Batwa “Pygmies” of Rwamahano, invite…
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What Tom Meant to Us (And Why You Should Care)
It is notoriously difficult to find a decent nightwatchman in the Gorilla Highlands region. The local mentality is that “you can kill two birds with one stone, do two jobs at once — one during the night, one during the day,” Edirisa staff Moses Oshaba explains. That puts the employer in an unfortunate situation because…
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Jane Goodall, World’s Leading Expert on Chimpanzees (1934-2025)
One hero fewer on this endangered planet … RIP. Don’t miss the article linked by The New Yorker — in not too many words, it paints a cool picture of Jane. You may also like: Katie’s Last-Minute Gorillas in Mgahinga National ParkPedalling Uganda: From Lakes and Gorillas to Lions in Trees (Part 2)Confessions: How an…
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Nyabingi? The One Whose Divination You Seek …
Dig beneath the spiritual surface anywhere in the Virungas and quite quickly you will come upon Nyabingi. From Rwanda to Uganda to the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, when you need the gods to smile upon you with wealth or a healthy pregnancy, Nyabingi is whose divination you seek.Nyabingi represents female energy and is concerned…
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Lake Bunyonyi’s Island of Death
Smack in the middle of Lake Bunyonyi floats a scruffy little island with a few dead trees and a whole lot of baggage. You wouldn’t give it a second look, unless locals tell you that the forlorn patch of land is called Akampene, or Punishment Island … Back in the day, if a girl was…
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