Musanze

The settlement that became Musanze grew up in the high, fertile country below the Virunga volcanoes, an area of dense population and heavy rainfall long before any colonial administration arrived. Under German and then Belgian rule it developed as Ruhengeri, an administrative and mission post on the road linking the centre of the country to Lake Kivu, and it gave its name to the surrounding province. The protection of the volcanoes began in 1925, when the colonial authorities created a reserve for the mountain gorillas, the first national park in Africa, of which the Rwandan portion became Volcanoes National Park.

The town's modern reputation was made in the forest above it. Dian Fossey established the Karisoke research camp on the saddle between Karisimbi and Bisoke in 1967 and spent almost two decades studying the gorillas there before her murder at the site in 1985; her work, and the film made from her book, turned a remote Rwandan district into a name known worldwide.

The same position made the town a front line. Ruhengeri sat close to the Ugandan border where the civil war of 1990–94 was fought, and was briefly held by the Rwandan Patriotic Front in January 1991; in the months that followed, up to 1,000 Tutsi were killed in attacks in the area authorised by local officials, before the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi. The wars of the 1990s in the region halted tourism, and gorilla trekking did not resume until 1999. After the 2006 administrative reform abolished the old provinces, the town became the capital of Musanze District and of the Northern Province, and it has since grown quickly on the back of park tourism and an intensive potato economy.

Musanze is a farming town with an international visitor trade grafted onto it, and the two sit side by side on the same streets. Kinyarwanda is universal, English and French are spoken in the tourism business, and a good deal of Swahili and some Lingala are heard because of the closeness of the Ugandan and Congolese borders and the trade that crosses them.

Conservation has become part of local identity rather than simply an industry. Kwita Izina, held each year since 2005, borrows the Rwandan ceremony of naming a child and applies it to gorilla infants, with dancing, speeches and crowds from the surrounding hills; a share of park revenue is directed to community projects in the villages around the boundary, and porters, trackers and guides are drawn from them. Intore dance troupes and drumming groups perform at the ceremony and at cultural villages set up near the park gate.

Everyday customs are those of the Rwandan countryside: formal greetings, deference to age, modest dress, church on Sunday for a largely Catholic and Protestant population, and umuganda on the last Saturday of the month, when the town turns out to clear drains and repair paths. The district is cool and often wet, so people dress warmly in a way that surprises visitors who expect equatorial heat, and the day ends early.

Musanze had a population of about 153,000 at the 2022 census, making it the third-largest city in Rwanda and the capital of the Northern Province. The volcanic soils are among the most productive in the country, and agriculture is the base of the economy: Irish potatoes above all, along with maize and beans, and a national programme aims to turn the potato trade of the district and its neighbours into an export business.

Tourism is the second pillar and the visible one. Lodges, guesthouses, tour operators, craft cooperatives and restaurants have multiplied since the return of trekking, and park work — guiding, tracking, portering, research — supports a large number of households. Schools and colleges bring students into the town, and in 2022 the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund opened its Ellen DeGeneres Campus in Rwanda as a permanent base for gorilla conservation.

Daily rhythm is early and agricultural. Trekkers assemble at Kinigi before seven, farmers are in the fields at first light, and the market is busiest in the morning. The town centre is flat and low-built, with a few storeys of shops and offices along the main road, while housing spreads up the surrounding slopes. Land pressure, crop-raiding by animals from the park, and the cost of housing in a town that has grown fast are the constant local concerns.

The food of Musanze is Rwandan food with the district's own produce at its centre. Potatoes are everywhere: boiled with beans, fried as chips beside a skewer of goat, or cooked into the thick stew of potato, beans and vegetables that is standard farmhouse eating. The midday buffet, sold by plate in the town's cafés, carries rice, beans, cooked green banana, cassava and sweet potato, isombe of pounded cassava leaf with groundnut, and a modest amount of meat.

Evening eating means brochettes — goat, beef or occasionally fish, grilled over charcoal and served with grilled plantain and a sharp raw tomato-and-onion relish — at bars around the centre, with Primus or Mützig beer or a soft drink. Fried pork is a weekend favourite, and sambusa, chapati and grilled maize are sold from stalls on the main street.

The volcanic soils produce vegetables and fruit of unusual quality for the region, and the market fills with carrots, cabbage, peas, passion fruit, tree tomato and avocado. Dairy is important in this cattle-keeping area, drunk fresh or as the fermented ikivuguto, and milk bars are a normal part of a town street. Arabica coffee is grown on the lower slopes of the district and tea further west, and a few cafés in the centre roast and serve Rwandan coffee for the visitor trade.