Historical heritage experience

About this tour

The Shali rock is located in Ngera sector in Nyaruguru district, where Nyaruguru district borders Huye district, on the road. Butare-Akanyaru towards Burundi. It has various origins, but the most important ones are based on the Rwanda’s 14th King Ruganzu  II Ndori around 1510-1543. when this king was fighting wars to expand Rwanda into Burundi, the Burundians realized that they did not have enough strength to fight him, so they sent him a large snake to prevent him from continuing.

Ruganzu was not at all afraid of the giant, and while everyone else was fleeing, he took a large stone and threw it into its mouth, and it instantly turned into this Shali stone. Others say that on reign of Ruganzu II Ndori in the Shali area, was a large snake that Used attack  people and destroyed crops and livestock. As it destroyed all this, it also prevented those who passed by from going to pay homage to King Ruganzu.

After Ruganzu found out, he went to hunt Ruziramire (the giant snake) and it fled into a hole. Ruganzu reportedly took a stone and covered the hole she had fled into, and took another stone and covered the sades of the whole where it existed and some residents claimed the rock to grow big while on the other hand, scientists argue that it should be the erosion which took the sand and expose it big over the years. The historical rock had been also acting as the medicine to the local residence as they used its very smallest pieces mixed with water as a cure to kids to overcome a disease.