Ugandan pygmies now working as tour guides
Uganda | RNW | September 2010 | link
Ugandan pygmies, the original inhabitants of the forests of Central-Africa, have been living in miserable conditions for two decades. The Batwa, as they prefer to be called, now use tourism to improve their lives.


A wailing song echoes through a dark cave. Slowly, the light of lanterns is being increased inside the humid Garama cave, in Uganda’s Mgahinga National Park. We have completed a walk during which we were shown various aspects of Batwa life. Small women appear: they have just sung for us. The hymn tells the story of their expulsion from Mgahinga park in 1991.

A gray haired man named Disi Ezekiel doesn’t know how old he is. In his small house, on the Congolese border and several miles outside Mgahinga, he tells about the past. ,,The forest gave us all we needed. We ate honey and sweet potatoes. We hunted down small animals for food and skins.” The Batwa have lived this traditional life for thousands of years.

,,The white men wanted us out of the forest,” says Disi Ezekiel firm. He blames environmentalists, who are protecting the Mountain Gorilla’s. Worldwide there are only some 720 left of this Gorilla specie, half of them in Uganda. The Ugandan government, which sells ‘permits’ to see the Gorilla’s for 500 US Dollar each, can earn up to 700,000 US Dollar monthly from Gorilla-tourism.

Uganda
There are less than 7,000 Batwa in Uganda, mostly squatting on land that is not theirs. ,,We can be chased away any time,” says Ezekiel. ,,We need money for medicines, but in the forest there was no money. I would dance if I was allowed back in the forest.”

But that chance seems slim. The Batwa now have to adapt to modern life. On Sunday, 23-year old Alice Nyamihanda became the first pygmy in Ugandan history to graduate from a university. ,,If our people are not allowed to go back to the forest, we should at least be given land to build up a new future,” she told me in her parent’s home, close to Mgahinga.

A new job opportunity is guiding tourists on the ‘Batwa trail’ that was recently set up with a Dutch subsidy of 25 thousand dollars. Batwa guides, led by 40-year-old Steven Barahirwa, take tourists on a 4-hour walk through their former home area; the Mgahinga park. Just after starting the trail, which costs 80 US Dollar to undertake, Barahirwa jumps up and down under a tree, shouting. ,,To ask the blessing of the Gods,” he explains later. After some kilometers of walking through the forest, another guide shows how the Batwa used to trap animals. He also imitates the animal, crawling in pain.

Adjusting
After climbing, watching and listening we reach the Garama cave, where the Batwa king used to meet his subjects. As bats fly all around us, we listen to the wailing women. Then they sing a more upbeat song. Barahirwa explains they are happy to see us, since tourists mean income for the women. ,,A lot of us Batwa have now become accustomed to life outside the forest,” says Barahirwa. ,,Maybe we would not even be able to survive here anymore.”

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