A Walk in the Gorilla Park with Odile and Olivier
Category: Art of Conservation (AoC) | Date: Sep 28 2008 | By: Julie
My buddy Ged of Terra Incognita ECOTOURS recently extended me the chance to go gorilla tracking with him and I jumped at the opportunity. (Please click here to view Ged’s ecotour destinations and my trip to Madagascar with Terra Incognita)
Upon arrival early in the morning at Rwanda’s Parc National des Volcans park headquarters in Kinigi our group of eight learn we will be visiting Kwitonda Group and are presented to our guides, Odile and Olivier.
This is Odile.
Park Guide Odile NYIRAGUHIRWA briefs us, the visitors, before we climb over the buffalo wall to enter the protected area, Rwanda’s Parc National des Volcans.
You may remember meeting Odile as an Art of Conservation guest speaker during the HIV-AIDS awareness, family planning, and personal hygiene unit. Recently, Odile finished university and applied for a guide position with ORTPN, the Rwandan tourism and national parks service, and she got the job!
This is Olivier with a tracker.
Olivier MUTUYIMANA, a park guide in Rwanda for ten years, positions a visitor from the United States with a nearly perfect vantage point of the Kwitonda gorilla family in the near distance - always enforcing visiting humans to be apart from the resident mountain gorillas by 7 meters.
Odile and Olivier graciously accept my request for a short conversation on tape about their roles in conservation.
The day was a quintessential Sunday Walk In The Park - the sun was shining, the paths were hardly muddy or slippery, and the gorillas were perfectly accommodating by emerging from the dense vegetation and plopping themselves down in an opening for excellent viewing.
Kwitonda, the silverback, holds the pose similar to Auguste Rodin’s late 1800’s bronze, The Thinker.
I turn to see another thinker, Ged.
Throwing Dantean and Wagnerian contemplation out the window, three young gorillas occupy themselves with the great act of play as I enviously pine to join in on the fun.
Tags: Art of Conservation (AoC)
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2 Responses to “A Walk in the Gorilla Park with Odile and Olivier”
sheryl, washington, dc, on 29 Sep 2008
I believe some of the luckiest people in the world are those who get to see mountain gorillas in the wild. Thanks for sharing your adventure .
s.
Samantha, on 04 Oct 2008
Thank you Julie. See you soon! And I hope you come to Rumangabo soon to teach some of your gorilla art to the kids there.
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