When travellers think of Rwanda, they usually think of the popular mountain gorillas, however, the Iby’Iwachu Cultural Village experience is also an unmissable signature experience for this country. This experience involves visiting the Iby’Iwachu Cultural Village, also known as “Gorilla Guardian’s Village”, a non-profit project created to improve the lives of reformed poachers and local communities surrounding Volcanoes National Park.
Here, a number of conservation incentives, support for community enterprise development programme and livelihood-based proposals are undertaken.
This signature experience offers travellers with the chance of experiencing typical and remarkable Rwandan rural life with a number of activities that include using big smooth stones for grinding grains, using bows and arrows, the traditional ‘Intore’ dance and taking part in the Royal Marriage between the King and his Queen.
Much as most activities provided at the Iby’Iwachu Cultural Village are stage-managed to give an insight into the daily lives of typical Rwandan life, surprisingly the proceeds go directly to the local communities to improve their livelihoods. This includes providing education, clean water, health advisory and Agricultural initiatives, offering support towards conservation initiatives such as exchanging goats for mountain gorillas and general enterprise development.
Activities during Iby’Iwachu Cultural Village Experience
The activities provided under Iby’Iwachu Culture Experience include guided community walks where travellers are led by a resident in visiting different homesteads and learning about their day-to-day activities that include farming.
Also, tours of the King’s Palace Replica are provided and led by a local guide who tells stories about the King, meanings of symbols at the Palace. Surprisingly, travellers have the chance to become King or Queen for minutes, become enthroned to exercise powers.
There is an opportunity to experience over 8 traditional dances performed by children, youth women and men using various traditional musical instruments. Are you interested in listening to the popular Gorilla songs performed by Ngayabatema? Then this is the right place.
Other activities provided at Iby’Iwachu Culture experience include visits to the local traditional healer, guided tours of the nearby local schools, and food preparation to have exceptional gastronomic experiences of the area.
You will also engage in banana beer brewing that begins with harvesting bananas followed by the ripening process until brewing and finally tasting. You can’t afford to miss the traditional hunting experience where you will learn how to use bow and arrows to hunt for animals in the forest.
You can also engage in local football matches with travellers, making of different art and craft objects and the unique Batwa pottery experiences. These activities sound expensive, but it would interest you to know that for only $35 per person, you have a whole day to be introduced to majority of the activities (depending on the available time).
However, to have the best of this signature experience in Rwanda, it is important to keep the environment clean at all times by keeping disposable water bottles and cans in rubbish bins that have been provided, first getting permission from locals before taking photos and dressing decently.