Gorillas and Genocide in Rwanda

Speaker: Dennis Spriggs

Most people have heard of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda in which the Hutus in an attempt to eradicate the hated Tutsis, killed over 80,000  people over a span of 100 days — mostly hacked to death by machetes.  There is even a 2005 movie, “Hotel Rwanda, describing that killing spree.   Alice and I visited Rwanda in 2006 where we visited the Genocide Museum and observed bullet holes in Hotel Rwanda.  The other reason for Rwanda was to climb one of the mountains in Volcanos National Park to find the critically endangered mountain gorillas.  These gorillas themselves faced a sort of genocide.  The Rwandan authorities made plans to convert much of the Volcanos National Park into cattle farming, hastening the demise of the entire gorilla population.  Luckily, this never happened when it was realized that gorillas were worth more alive than dead and worth more than the cattle they were planning to raise.  The talk will touch on both topics — genocide and the life-alternating experience of visiting the magnificent gorillas in their natural habitat.  One of these experiences was when an adult gorilla grabbed me by the leg intent on understanding the fur of this strange ape-like creature.  Lots of pictures will be worked into the talk.

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