That’s like imagining the Virunga Forest WITHOUT mountain gorillas, forest buffaloes, golden monkeys, and forest elephants (yikes!).

ART -
WITHOUT art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.
George Bernard Shaw

Recently, we, Valerie, Eric, Fahad, and I, brought to our Art of Conservation classes a variety of additional artist’s tools. Due to time and financial resource constraints, we will most likely not get to a lesson dedicated to experimenting with acrylics or oils on canvas, for example. This is OK - we cover a lot in our three-month courses - but we still want to briefly expose our students to a few other possibilities and choices for making art.

Eric with a handful of brushes.

Outside of our classroom at Nyabigoma Primary School, Fahad sets up his easel and canvas and shows a box of oil paints for students to check out.

Valerie helps me show the contents of this paint set which includes watercolors, gouaches, brushes, watercolor pencils and a selection of papers.

Umuvumu is the name in Kinyarwanda for the two tall trees standing on opposite sides of this footpath leading toward the house that is located outside of the park. Impuzu is the word in the same language for ‘barkcloth’ which is made from this tree. Fahad and Eric stretch barkcloth to use as their canvases.

MUSIC -
WITHOUT music, life would be a mistake.
Friedrich Nietzsche

In addition to art materials, we bring to class any musical instrument we can get our hands on. No one really knows how to play the guitar, but who cares? Sometimes it is just great to make noise.

Saturday and Sunday mornings as Team AoC bounces along the volcanic ground in my truck heading toward the schoolhouse, we can see the children clapping their hands and as we get closer we soon hear the children singing. We hand one of the kid’s the classroom door key, they unlock the door and continue singing as everyone settles in for the art class.

Bob Marley sings, “One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.”

Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.
Berthold Auerbach

Life WITHOUT art, music, and mountain gorillas…NO WAY!
Julie Ghrist

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