Some Baby Gorillas Need Names, I’m On It.

Unless you’ve been living under a giant rock, then you know darn well that this Saturday is the official gorilla naming ceremony in Kinigi, Rwanda.

*crickets*

Hmm, okay, let’s try this again.  Guess what everyone?!  This Saturday in Rwanda, tons of people will gather together to celebrate the naming of baby gorillas – it’s called Kwita Izina!!

*boisterous cheers emanate from the magical internets – people gasp, feint, and cry tears of jubilation*

Okay, that’s more like it.  Here’s the skinny: it’s a tradition in Rwanda for family and friends to gather together and celebrate the naming of children in the community.  Basically, parents show off their kids and reveal to everyone what they named their little bundles of joy.  Quick tangent here – if I try hard to penetrate the heavily guarded area of my brain where fragile and hurtful emotions reside, I seem to recall several family gatherings where drunk relatives would round up us little ones and “name” us with glowing adjectives/phrases such as “marriage destroyers,” “shit machines,” and “the reasons why mommy takes pills.”  No one else had this experience too?

ANYHOW, since gorillas are an integral part of the Rwandan ecosystem (and many Rwandans feel responsible for protecting and conserving the gorillas’ habitat) they have these same naming ceremonies for the baby gorillas!  It should be no surprise that I am doing everything in my power to make this my friggin job.  I’m totally about to quit my dreadful career to become an official Baby Gorilla Namer (anyone willing to work on a business card?).  The Rwandans do it up right too – they like to start things off with a hella party on Wed night:

Party flyer on the Kwita Izina website

And it doesn’t stop there.  No ceremony is worth a damn if you can’t get some celebrities in on the action, like Natalie Portman (2009), Don Cheadle (2010), or famous animal man Jack Hanna (no clue what year).  It’s the place to be.

Anyhow, I’m not here to tell you about the ceremony, as much as I’m here to name some baby gorillas.  This year, there’s 23 furry youngsters to be named, all pictured at Kwita Izina’s Flickr page.  I’ll make you a deal, I’ll name some if you name some.

1.  FuzzyFaced BananaMuncher
2.  Captain SizzlePickles
3.  Chester McShitSlinger
4.  Ubuntu (yea I know it’s a computer software brand, but c’mon, the name belongs to a damn gorilla)
5.  Ted (or J.J.)
6.  Cindy SnuggleBuckets
7.  Lieutenant ChestThumper
8.  Colonel  Cutie PooShooter (I’m digging the military rank prefixes; it works)

Okay, your turn.  Leave some names in the comment section, will ya?

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