Children of the Hills

Rwanda sits in Central Africa, measuring around 10,000 square miles. Its mountainous landscape has earned the country its nickname, the Land of a Thousand Hills. The mountain gorilla is one of four sub-species of gorillas. They roam the dense jungles of Rwanda, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, spending most of their time at high elevations foraging for food. With just 1,000 mountain gorillas alive today, the animals remain endangered. Illegal poaching, disease, habitat loss, and the effects of war and civil unrest in the region continue to pose a great threat to these animals. Rwanda is an agricultural nation, and farmland surrounds the Virunga Mountains where the gorillas live. Farmers depend on this land for their livelihoods, creating a delicate balance between the people and the gorillas whose habitat has been encroached upon. The government reinvests tourism profits into these local communities to show the people they can also benefit from sharing the land with these incredible creatures. I sought to use this series to highlight the stories and faces of those who call these hills home.