“I want to suck your blood!” was Count Dracula’s version of sweet talking us in old movies. Dracula was a vampire, living off the blood of humans. He could shape-shift, changing his appearance from man to bat at his convenience. Part of the mythology of vampires holds that they must avoid sunlight, which is interesting since anything more than brief exposure to the sun does kill most bats by dehydrating them. Like the story of Dracula, scary beliefs have influenced mankind’s attitudes towards bats for ages. But are bats really so bad? Are they really here on earth to terrorize us, or do they have a useful purpose? Maybe they are just misunderstood, and as they say,                                                                     More

Clouds brood ominously overhead as we arrive in Kagano Living Village. Tucked underneath the rich green forests of three volcanoes – the cone shaped Gahinga,
the pointed, soaring Murabura and the craggy, jagged peaks of Sabyinyo, the village’s spectacular setting does not even merit a pause to admire the view from the local residents: there are crops to tend and work to be done. The Kinigi Cultural Centre and Community Walk is a unique project that provides rare insight into the everyday lives of the communities who scratch out a living at the foot of the volcanoes bordering Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda’s high altitudes.    More

On the steep trek back, among a twittering chorus of Bwindi’s ever present black and white pied wagtail, I remark to the Freddys how the Nkuringo family can seem human at times, and even mirror my own immediate family, which at seventeen individuals is about the same size as Nkuringo’s eighteen, the Kemsey brood including a similar mix of silver backs, black backs, teenagers, juveniles and mothers with young children. Homo sapiens, does after all, share 98 percent of our DNA with gorilla beringei beringei.                                                         More

By Kayo Yamada.
As the outskirts of Kigali come into view, a climate completely different than the city’s bustling neighbourhoods emerges. Passing through the city’s rolling hills in the Nyamirambo Sector, the village area of Rubona Umudugudu is the face of a rural Rwanda with limited access to the benefits of current socioeconomic development. However, the simple craft of making soap is empowering people in this local community.                                                                                More

Colour is part of our everyday lives. From the clothes we wear to the food we eat, to the life that surrounds us at any time. Some of us are attracted to specific colours, others don’t like certain colour(s) at all. Why? Well, there is much more to colour than roses are red and violets are blue...
What is colour?
Colour is an energy of light that vibrates on different frequencies and wavelengths.
The seven main colours of the spectrum that we can see are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. The rainbow is a perfect natural example of this spectrum.
Red is at the low end with a high wavelength and low frequency. Violet is at the top end with a lower wavelength but high frequency. The higher the frequency, the higher the energy.
The lower frequency colours red, orange and yellow have stimulating effects on us whereas the higher frequency colours green, blue, indigo and violet have calming effects.                                                                                                                                      More