Ethnographic Museum is a few kilometers a head of the Royal Kings palace museum which is found in Nyanza district, on your way to Nyungwe National Park in the southern province of Rwanda is the Ethnographic museum of Rwanda, The museum is situated 132 kilometers alongside the road as your entering into Huye town from Kigali city, which usually takes about 2 and a half hours to reach depending on your stop over.
Formerly known as the national museum of Rwanda, the Ethnographic museum is now one of the eight museums that make up the institute of National museums of Rwanda. With the help of the Belgium government the museum was built in 1987 to help serve as a good source for information about the cultural history of Rwandans.
Ethnographic museum of Rwanda houses seven galleries that include some of Africa’s finest ethnographic collections, and these seven exhibition galleries display ethnographic and historical artistic and archeological artifacts. You can tour around the seven galleries or with the help of visual aides get to have an insight about the rich Rwandan culture.
On your visit to the ethnographic museum of Rwanda, you start your experience with touring the exhibit galleries with geographical and geological displays, learn about the topography of Rwanda from a large relief map you will have a look at the traditional equipment’s that would be used in the old times for hunting, agriculture, pottery, weaving and woodworks, as well as animal husbandry. You will be amazed to see a hut named Kagondo in one of the exhibits that showcases the housing and living compounds of Rwandans back in the old precolonial times.
You will be introduced to several other displays moving on to different exhibition halls such the traditional clothing that include pieces on display such as the backcloth garments, capes made from goats skin among others. Learn about the architectural methods used in the past which will be well illustrated to you by your museum guide, feel free to ask as many questions so as to deeply get to understand our culture.
The other interesting part of this Ethnographic museum showcases artifacts of Rwanda’s tradition customs, and beliefs, learn more about the prehistory that includes a section about divination, culture as well as the oral tradition. There is also a museum craft center shop that has beautiful artistic and crafts that you can buy as souvenirs to keep memories about your visit to Rwanda.
If you are much interested in the cultural and historical adventure experiences in Rwanda, try to visit Ethnographic museum of Rwanda, you will get rewarding moments that will be spiced up with traditional performances from Intore dancers and drummers that you can arrange to entertain you on arrival.
Usually, Tourists combine this interesting trip with a visit to the King’s Palace Museum in Nyanza for more historical facts about king’s leadership in Rwanda and you can do an en-route visit to both museums on your to or from Nyungwe National Park, which is a primate home featuring exhilarating moments of encounters with the chimpanzees while doing Chimpanzee trekking or Colobus Monkey trekking among other activities like the Canopy walk.