Explore treasures of Gorilla Guardians Village : Gorilla Guardians is a renowned Non-Profit organization situated few kilometers from the Volcanoes National Park. The organization aimed to improve the lives of reformed poachers and communities around Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park through provision of conservation incentives, supporting community enterprise development and livelihood based projects. Therefore, visiting this fascinating village will not only introduce you to their conservation efforts but also rewards you will there deep history and traditions in theirs way of living.
Currently the village is famously known as Iby’iwacu cultural village “treasures of our home or our heritage”. Visitor who visit the Gorilla Guardian villages gets enough experiences and be entertained by the traditional Intore dance team through a dancing performance, songs and folk. Visitor here gets an opportunity to get involved in part of the traditional food preparations lessons, milking cattle’s, making products like local ghee and yogurt and also preparing local banana alcohol . visitors as well gets an opportunity of seeing the typical African lifestyle that comprises of African houses, traditional dances, dressing codes, herbs, food plus the organization of the ancient kingdoms .visitors also gets a chance to learn about the Rwandan ancient practices and skills like hunting, craft making , weaving items like mats, baskets and carpentry skills .
While in gorilla guardian village, visitors are offered with a vast number of activities in order to embark on their cultural experiences and add on their Rwanda adventure safaris to Gorilla guardian village. Visitors on a guided community walks can take part in the community walk where you will explore the village and get to learn and see deep in their interesting rural settings, how they conduct their daily activities. While in the community walk tour here you will get to explore their rich culture and traditions where you get chance to take park of some of the traditional activities like dancing performances, food preparations, basket weaving, milking among others.
Visiting the village traditional healers, this is the most interesting moments in the Gorilla Guardia village .The village has a skillful traditional healer who treats sicknesses with plants, roots, barks, herbs, leaves and shrubs and during your visit to the village, you will be led by a local guide to his traditional clinic to find out the sicknesses treated and even interact with some of the patients.
You may also engage in touring the king’s palace replica, Visiting gets an opportunity to explore the King’s house replica and listening to all the Kings’ stories, the meanings of different symbols within the palace guided by a local guide. While at the palace you will be crowned as a king and Queen and can exercise King’s powers as bestowed to you by a village elder through a village ceremony.
While in a cultural tour in Gorilla Guardian, you will be led to the nearest local schools where you will get to learn how the educational programs are run. You will be amazed how the education here is conducted with the scholastic equipment’s like test books, laptops, electricity and many more.
Another exciting moment in Gorilla Guardian is visiting the Batwa pottery making. Pottery making is one of the main business activity in the village, the Batwa who once lived in the forests usually show case their experience and techniques of curving woods, how they used to hunt and kill animals, make fire from woods and finally relate a touching story of how they have lived since their removal from the forest to change from poaching and resort to conservation as part of their new life challenge.
Farming is another activity that you cannot miss during your visit to Guardian Village. This activity gives you wider experience where visitors join local people when they go to their agricultural fields to work and learn about their work, harvest and participate in food preparation and making processes like millet grinding using stones, carrying potatoes and water on their heads, and attend lessons and participate in preparing a local dish such as Ubugari and Igikoma
You will also engaged in any of the 8 traditional dances , they are extraordinarily and offered in Gorilla Guardian village where you get to see the young men, women and children entertaining visitors with their eight types of Intore traditional dances backed by traditional musical instruments such as drums, flutes featuring gorilla songs that have been composed by Ngayabatema and other local people to educate the young generations about conservation in form of rap songs called Ibyivugo in Kinyarwanda.
You will also take part in local food preparation and local beer making , this is the most interesting activity were you will follow the local women in the garden to collect vegetables, potatoes , sweet potatoes among others, firewood and water and engage in the preparation. You will learn about the process of banana ripening (although you will use already ripe fruits since ripening takes days), brewing, and finally tasting the local beer.
