Learning About the Traditional Culture of the Batwa

6/16/15

For the first time since I have been coming to Africa to visit our projects, I took a couple days off to visit the mountain gorillas, which live very close to our Batwa villages. It was great to have some time to relax and the gorillas were spectacular! However, a wonderful unexpected plus was that our lodge, the Mt. Gahinga Lodge in Kisoro, Uganda, offers a Batwa Experience. This is a trail you follow in the forest where a group of Batwa (not a group we work with already) demonstrate how they used to live before they were forced out of the forest by the government. The government did this because it was forming national parks where the Batwa were living, but it did very little to help the Batwa resettle elsewhere.

Because the Batwa have no land and because in the forest they were hunter/gatherers and had no farming skills or experience, they are now living in the most extreme conditions one can imagine, also marginalized by those living around them. Today, however, I learned about who the Batwa USED to be and about their rich and unique culture.

The trail began with a man and a woman in traditional dress showing us different plants growing wild in the forest that are used for medicinal purposes. A little further along they showed us how a spiritual ritual is performed using banana beer and honey offered to the gods and the man demonstrated how they hunted with a bow and arrow. He let me have a try at using the bow to “kill” the animal (It was fake). If left to me, I am afraid the family would starve! They also demonstrated how they created and used traps. The next station on the path was a tree house and swing, like those used in the forest to entertain children while their parents hunted. An older child would perch in the tree house with a bow and arrow to protect the younger kids in case an animal were to come around. The last demonstration was two traditional huts and how the Batwa are able to make fire by using only two sticks.

This trail is not only used for educating the tourists that come through to see the gorillas, golden monkeys and for hiking. It is also used to make sure that the Batwa children do not lose the ways of their grandparents and those before them. For me, it was incredible to learn about how they lived before, because knowing them only as they are now, I really had no idea how well they were living in the forest and therefore lacked the understanding of exactly why it is so difficult for them now to survive and prosper. Much like the native Americans, they went from rich in land and culture to deep into poverty and little land.

We have been planning to organize our Batwa groups to receive tourists in a more centralized way, putting all money raised into a fund for all of the communities we are working with in the area around Kabale (a different area than the Batwa near the lodge). Now, we know that this kind of experience will be great for educating and entertaining tourists and we definitely will include it in our tourist center, along with dancing/singing and crafts. Hopefully, this will be up and running by the end of the summer.

This afternoon, we drove back over the border into Rwanda and are in Kigali for the next few days.

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