![]() And because of our history, because everything is new, there are no traditions and no limits.”įashion designer Sonia Mugabo, the youngest of the three, was four years old at the time of the 1994 genocide. “But we have a better life we’re the generation with the freedom to do what we’re passionate about. ![]() “For our parents it was all about survival and school fees,” she says. Teta Isibo, a jewellery designer, also 33, echoes her friend’s sentiment. “I want to be a part of something that pushes this country forward.” “I’m proud of something that’s made in Rwanda,” says Linda Mukangoga, 33, who has her own fashion brand Haute Baso. The views across the red rooftops of low-rise Kigali are stormy and, inside, the room is also electrifying. We meet in the café on the top floor of the national library. Back in the capital Kigali, I have organized a roundtable of young artists and designers they’re part of a group called Collective RW that holds fashion shows, live installation art and pop-ups. Rwanda is setting itself apart as a stand-out beacon of conservation in the central and east African region. It is no coincidence all this investment is being made at the same time. There will be two more high-end hotels opening in the Parc National des Volcans soon: one by Africa’s finest, Singita, and another by One&Only (the latter who are also opening in the forest of Nyungwe). Wilderness Safaris is reforesting surrounding land, which will increase the park’s size by 2.5 per cent that’s enough new habitat for an additional gorilla group to flourish. The property is raising standards in the area-from a conservation perspective, too. One exuberant baby energetically beat its little chest with its little fists, perhaps hoping to intimidate us. There was a weary female breastfeeding, while a few young ones played around her. A massive silverback sat nearby shredding wild celery, folding nettle leaves before gently inserting them into his mouth, chomping at bamboo. Although I had met gorillas face to face before, it always causes the skip of a heartbeat to come across the broad shoulder of a shaggy blackback, who turns to lock gazes with its amber eyes. That morning it was an unusually short hike to find them: just an hour or two from the starting point. A dozen families have been habituated in Rwanda-and, at the park station, I was allocated to track the largest group, Kwitonda, which comprised 29 individuals including a number of juveniles and even babies. Living among the high-altitude forests here are endangered mountain gorillas there are fewer than a thousand in the world. It feels like the beginning of time here at the watershed of Africa’s greatest rivers raindrops landing on one side trickle into the Congo, on the other towards the Nile.įurther north I visit the Parc National des Volcans, part of Africa’s first national park, gazetted in 1925, where there are ancient volcanoes-the Virungas-straddling the borders with Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. In the gloom at ground level there might be the sudden flash of blue, or startling orange, of butterflies moseying around sprouting orchids clinging to mossy trunks babblers, boubous and bush-shrikes call out, and there’s the chirrup of a squirrel. This is Nyungwe, some of the most stunning mountain rainforest anywhere in Africa with old-growth mahogany, ebony and tree ferns, and gigantic ficus with their folded buttresses. It is the wilderness that is so immensely impressive. ![]() ![]() We giggle as we U-turn back and forth, keenly aware of the chimps’ agility in the treetops, and our own limitations below.īut the primates here are a distraction for me. It is a few hours after sunrise and I’m with a ranger and seven other tourists tracking chimps, crisscrossing the hillside, waiting for instructions on the walkie-talkie from trackers who are struggling to keep up with this scattered family. I inhale the earthy forest, heavy with oxygen, a rising smell of rain and mulch. It walked along a branch, distinctively tailless, swinging its gangly arms back and forth, then grabbing at a slender tree limb and swinging across the gap like Tarzan, before shimmying up a trunk towards another cluster of fruit. Then, to their right, I saw the unmistakeable silhouette of a chimpanzee against the slate-grey sky: the round head, the slouched posture, the prominent mouth. One leapt through the air, akimbo for an instant, before crash-landing on a trampoline-like tangle of branches. There were a pair of playful Dent’s monkeys, flashing their white bellies. I scrambled up the steep, forested mountainside and stared into the rustling canopy. We could hear them long before we could see them, as they released a frenzied series of screeches and whoops, heightening in pitch and volume. ![]()
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