Ethnographic Museum of Rwanda : The ethnographic museum of Rwanda is majorly known as the Butare Museum and it’s the main and largest museum in Rwanda compared to other museums. While on a Rwanda safari, you can clearly notice this. The museum is located in Butare about 35 kilometers drive from Kigali city center and it’s the best places for one to learn more about the history and geopolitics of Rwanda. Many ancients things about Rwanda are found here with all the historical culture and traditions of Rwandans that attract many visitors both local and international where they share an experience with the Rwanda culture norms and traditions.
The national museum was constructed in the late 1990s and it’s famous because of the death of Queen Dowager Rosalie Gicanda the wife to the Rwandan king Mwami who was killed during the genocide on 20TH April 1994. Besides the Butare museum, Rwanda has got other museums such as Rukare ancient history museum, Nyanza-Rwesero art museum and Kigali-kandt house among others. All these provide a rich insight into the Rwandan culture and traditional cultures.
The museum presents an amazing collection of exhibitions about the Rwanda tradition and culture history. The museum was officially opened in 1988 by the Belgium king Baudouin 1 who presented it to Rwanda as a gift. The museum is sited on 20 hectares of land that cover the indigenous vegetation as well as the traditional craft training center. The building covers a land surface of 25,000 meters with seven rooms where each illustrates people from the early ages to the present times. The place has a number of English pamphlets and books that are on sale which are in English and Kinyarwanda. Feel free to buy any of the books as they may help you to understand the original background and history of Rwanda.
Room 1 at the main entrance hall has a galaxy for provisional exhibitions with severe shelves that contain traditional handcrafts that is for sale. The second room shows a broad view of Rwanda’s environmental, physical, ecological and geographical history as well as the growth of its territory and inhabitants of Rwanda. The third room displays different occupation of the people of Rwanda such as hinters, gatherers, farmers and stock keepers. All the mentioned are being illustrated as well as the advanced development gears and means of transport. The guides explain to you the social importance of cattle keeping and they will take you through the guidelines to follow while making traditional banana beer. The fourth room displays a number of handcrafts and how they make traditional household items such as mats, baskets, pottery, wooden shields of intore traditional dance, leatherworks and many more others.
As you visit the fifth room, it displays various styles and methods of traditional architecture as well as how a full royal hut is constructed. Room six illustrates traditional games and sports and it has space for costumes and traditional equipments for the traditional dances. Room 7 consists of displays reciting the traditional culture, customs and beliefs, history, poetry and oral tradition as well as supernatural wellbeing of Rwandans. There is still on site construction and thus more rooms are yet to be added.
However, the museum in Rwanda acts as an ideal and educative place for students and researchers from different national and international institutions who are carrying out research in various domains at both levels of the museum and in the surrounding area.
As well it acts as a meeting place for scientists, artists and it’s a good information and documentation center due to the fact that it has a lot of information on the country’s historic, religious and cultural background.
