Wilderness Bisate Newsletter – March 2024

During the closure period, our full staff complement jumped in on the action and assisted with a lick of paint here, the sanding of a table there and, of course, we also managed to squeeze in some team-building in the form of intensely competitive soccer matches, group lunches prepared by our senior chefs and amazingly, spontaneous dance-offs to the likes of classic artists such as Kylie Minogue and Rod Stewart. There is nothing in this world as awe-inspiring as huge manly maintenance team members gyrating to “Man, I feel like a woman” by Shania Twain.

As we head into the full rainy season, we embrace the raw, unique beauty around the misty Virunga Mountains of our home in northern Rwanda.

Tuzamurane Co-operative in Bisate further empowered through mushroom project

The Tuzamurane Co-operative was established when the construction of Wilderness Bisate started. Since then, a strong bond has been forged through numerous mutually beneficial activities between Bisate and the Co-operative. 

The Tuzamurane Co-operative assists Bisate with the necessary manpower for its reforestation project, members supply fresh produce from their surrounding farms, and through guest donations, small-scale sustainable farming initiatives in the surrounding community have been implemented.

The Co-operative has 241 members – 169 men and 72 women – representing the villages around Wilderness Bisate. 

Through generous donations from Bisate guests, we were able to assist Tuzamurane with the establishment of an avocado tree nursery. It is now a successful nursery producing many avocado saplings each year. The next project was the establishment of an organic composting site, for which all the Tuzamurane members received training, with tons of organic manure now being produced.

Our next project is all about mushrooms, starting with training for all the Tuzamurane members on how to successfully grow the fungi. Once they have all received training, growing can start, with the aim of fighting malnutrition and providing additional income for the poorest households in the area. 

This project, valued at USD 4,500, has been made possible thanks to the support of our generous Bisate guests.

Very kind and thoughtful Swiss guests travelled to Wilderness Bisate with almost 60kg of extra luggage! Their additional luggage was filled with school materials like pencils, backpacks, notebooks, and more, as listed on the Pack for a Purpose packing list. 

Our CITW Rwanda colleagues Aline and Damascene distributed the supplies to our partner schools in the Bisate area, and we shared the subsequent photos and some videos with the guests.

Their response was very gratifying… “WOW – that’s so great! Thank you for sharing these videos and pictures. We were so grateful for the opportunity to do this. We hope everyone is doing wonderful at Bisate – you have such a magical place and special group of people”.
Aline and Damascene distributed the supplies to 370 children, who received 6 pencils each. The backpacks were given to the best-performing students in middle school, while all the other supplies were handed over to the teachers to be used during their regular lessons.

All the children and the teachers say a heartfelt THANK YOU for this support!

It seems that the increase in rainfall has caused our nature trails to take on a life of their own! Cascading foliage and swelling bamboo forests seem to have taken over the property, and in response to this, our local animal species have turned Bisate into their personal playground. The servals, jackals and African wildcats have become firm residents of the area, and we are also seeing a slow but steady increase in different bird species as well.

We are in the process of installing a camera trap on one of our new nature trails and have high hopes that we will have some amazing footage coming through in the next few months. Stay tuned!