Every year, Rwanda does something that, at first glance, seems almost simple.
It gathers before the mountains and gives names to baby gorillas.
But there is nothing simple about a country choosing to name wild animals.
On September 4, at Kinigi, 22 young mountain gorillas received names during the 21st Kwita Izina. The ceremony has become one of Rwanda’s defining conservation traditions, drawing people from politics, business, sport, entertainment and the conservation world to a landscape where the boundary between human life and wildlife is unusually close.
The names themselves tell part of the story.
Ishakwe — determination.
Shikama — stand strong.
Rugamba — fighter.
Ngabonzima — protector.
Ndongozi — leader.
Muhuza — one who brings people together.
Ntwarane — united in pursuit of a common purpose.
There is something revealing in that vocabulary.
These are not merely names for animals. They are qualities that Rwanda has chosen to speak aloud in the presence of the mountain gorillas.
That is one reason Kwita Izina has endured.
The ceremony draws from the Rwandan tradition of naming, but it has also become a way of making conservation personal. A population becomes individuals. A species becomes faces and stories. A statistic becomes a living animal with a name that can be remembered.That matters because wildlife conservation is often conducted in the cold language of numbers: populations, habitats, births, deaths, hectares, revenues.
Numbers are necessary.
But they do not make people care.
Names can.
A gorilla called Muganura is easier to remember than an unnamed member of a population.
Impeta is no longer merely another animal in a conservation report. The act of naming gives the public something intimate to hold on to, even though the animal itself will never understand the significance attached to its name.
And perhaps that is the point.
The naming is really an act of responsibility by the humans watching from the other side of the forest.
Rwanda’s mountain gorillas live in an ecosystem that cannot be separated neatly from the lives of people around it. Volcanoes National Park is not an empty wilderness somewhere beyond human concerns. It sits alongside communities, farms, roads, businesses and a tourism economy that depends heavily on the survival of the animals inside the forest.
So conservation here is not simply a question of saving gorillas.
It is a question of negotiating how humans and wildlife share a limited piece of earth.
That makes the annual ceremony more consequential than its colour and celebrity might suggest.
This year, the namers included former football star Patrice Evra, Olympic high-jump champion Mutaz Essa Barshim, footballer Mamadou Sakho, filmmaker Alastair Fothergill and a range of conservation and business figures.
Their fame brings attention.
But attention is not conservation.
The harder work happens after the cameras leave: monitoring the animals, protecting their habitat, supporting the people who live beside it, managing tourism and ensuring that the economic value generated by the gorillas strengthens rather than undermines their protection.
That is where the meaning of Kwita Izina ultimately has to be measured.
Since the ceremony began in 2005, hundreds of gorillas have been named. This year’s 22 bring the total number named through Kwita Izina to 460.Four hundred and sixty names is an impressive number.
But the more important number is the one that cannot be announced from a stage: how many generations will still be able to live in those mountains because people decided that protecting them was worth the effort?
That is the question hidden inside every celebration.
A baby gorilla is named today for a life that may stretch far beyond the people who gathered to name it.
The ceremony lasts a day.
Conservation does not.
And so Rwanda returns each year to the same mountains, the same forest and the same extraordinary animals, giving them names as if to remind itself that what has a name should not be easily forgotten.
Twenty-two gorillas were named this year.
The real story is whether the world around them will remain worthy of those names.
