Amid Discrimination and Ejection, the Batwa Community Pays Homage to the Rainforest Through Sustainability and Conservation Efforts
"…we can't necessarily return the Batwa to the forest at this point in time, but we can return the forest to the Batwa..."
The Batwa community has struggled since they were kicked out of their homes in the rainforests of Southwestern Uganda to favor mountain gorilla conservation efforts, which have actually yielded increased gorilla populations. The pygmy tribe was forced to relocate to the outskirts of the forest and has since struggled to engage in other forms of livelihood that neither align with their traditional values nor history of living in the forest, squirrel or antelope hunting, or even honey extraction. They have largely been forsaken by the government and other tribes in their society and, unfortunately, are not excellent farmers either, largely leaving them at the mercy of tourists and nonprofits.
Despite numerous challenges, including environmental degradation and the risk of extinction, the community in Kalehe, southwestern Uganda, has recently excelled in conserving indigenous plant species, sustainable coffee production, and animal husbandry, in thanks to the dedicated advocacy of environmental journalist, Wendee Nicole.
Nicole has worked with the Batwa for more than ten years and is a welcome member of the family in Kalehe village. Her daughter, Joyce Orishaba, an undergraduate at Stanford University, left with her for the United States as a child, but is Batwa through and through and partners actively with Nicole to implement environmental sustainability projects in the area through the Redemption Song Foundation, to the benefit of the entire tribe. Nicole and Orishaba speak to The Habibat Project on their environmental sustainability efforts, including the challenges, successes, and a particularly fond memory of Orishaba’s grandfather using ‘bush medicine’ on his body to harvest honey, which sounded really cool.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What exactly is the Batwa struggle about?
Nicole: The Batwa people are an indigenous hunter-gatherer tribe that lived in the Central African Rainforest, pretty much from time immemorial, and they were forcibly removed in Uganda at gunpoint to create a national park to save mountain gorillas. They were not necessarily threatening the gorillas, because they'd lived there forever with the gorillas, and the gorillas were being poached by other groups. Interestingly, I went there as a journalist in 2014, and one of the things I was reporting on was how human livelihoods and wildlife or forest conservation can work together, and how it sometimes does not work together. And there's research out of Makerere University in Uganda by a professor named Abwoli Banana, who was on our committee as a board member for a while, and he showed that when the Batwa were living in the forest, there was actually less poaching, not just of gorillas, but of other wildlife. Not living in the forest anymore, they have had to turn to agriculture, which does not come natural to them.
Can you share some of the repercussions the Batwa have had to deal with, since being forcefully evicted from the forest?
Orishaba: Being in school in America, I wasn't able to be in the forest [for long], but I think them [my people] being removed from there [the forest] and put in this new environment and culture that they're not used to, lost a part of who they used to be in the forest, because now it feels like we don't know who we really are. They're not sure whether they are Batwa or Bakiga, which is the other tribe, and I think what brings a lot of our problems is that we're not able to fit in, because we're not able to know who we were in the beginning in order to adapt to this new culture. We're very much discriminated against in the village, so we [often] want to be like the other tribe [Bakiga] so we can fit in.
What is the story behind the Batwa community’s reforestation campaign, and what has been the impact on the people and the environment?
Nicole: Being a conservationist, I was like, we can't necessarily return the Batwa to the forest at this point in time, but we can return the forest to the Batwa, so we started a campaign of ten-thousand trees, and we've planted about four-thousand so far. We [planted] native trees, because we didn't want to plant non-native, invasive plants for the most part; we do plant fruit trees like mangoes, avocado, jackfruit, so that we [can] provide them food security, [and] create a sustainable food forest, so the native trees like mahogany and African cherry will grow. We worked with this really amazing woman named Asiimwe Mourine, who had won the Miss Conservation Kigezi, and she helped us plant the trees. She would come back and make sure that they were taken care of and growing up properly. Now and then, we continue to plant trees, and we get the kids to plant them, so the kids can watch their little trees grow up.
How has this ‘ten-thousand tree campaign’ impacted your community's relationship with the land and their view of sustainability?
Orishaba: I remember when we went back [to the village] in 2016 to plant trees, and I hadn't been up there [in a while], because mom had gone back a couple of times without me, because [I was] at school. We went up to the village where I lived, and it looked so pretty, so green, and there were more trees. Planting the trees definitely was an experience [for] the kids, and they looked so happy to do it. Like mom said, planting their own little trees and watching them grow up is definitely a good way to connect them to the forest and nature in general, because they do love being in the forest. I think having the fruits, the trees, and where they can climb and play around their home is a good way to keep them [my people] connected to the forest and nature and, maybe somehow, their original roots will come back.
How have you gone about the coffee production and animal-husbandry projects, making sure that they are environmentally and economically sustainable?
Nicole: Basically, we're trying to create a sustainable food forest, which is like permaculture, where you have trees and forest, gardens, and fruit trees. We have coffee, and it’s shade-grown. It's still very new, because we've only had this going on since the pandemic. The rabbits and the goats provide manure, which is fertilizer for the gardens. The rabbit urine and poop is very good for coffee, so I was taught, and I passed this along to the Batwa as a tradition they can put [to work] on coffee [plants] and vegetables to repel insects and mold. [Basically], they take some nitrogen fixing plants, rabbit poop, sometimes goat poop, and the rabbit urine, and they mix it in; then they make this big blue bin full of liquid manure, and they set it there for 30 days. It marinates, and they can then spray it on coffee and their vegetables, and it's a natural way to repel pests without using chemicals, knowing that chemicals can be harmful to your health. The animals are an integral part of that, because they provide the poop that can actually fertilize the soil, but it can also be this liquid manure that can repel pests from the leaves, etc, and we use a pass-on-the-gift model, which I learned from the Jane Goodall Institute, where, when you give one family rabbits or goats, the first one or two offsprings then get passed on to the next family. The great thing about living organisms is what I try to teach the Batwa — if you can take care of your herd, your vegetables, or your trees, you will always be able to survive.
Can you shed more light on their homeland that has been converted to the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, the UNESCO site?
Nicole: The whole park is their land that has been stolen from them. The tropical forest used to be much bigger, and they cut down the trees and, eventually, that's why they kicked out the Batwa people. They were going to save what's left [of the forest], but I don't know why they thought the Batwa people had to be removed, but that's what they did. So, that is their land, and there are legal cases happening right now. In fact, the Batwa won a case that said that they were unfairly removed, and that they were owed compensation for that loss. Then it was appealed by the Ugandan government, and that's still currently in litigation, but they will, hopefully, one day get, if not back in the forest or access to the forest, money for that loss, because it is a hundred percent their land. Every time I drive through [the park], I tell Joyce, this is your forest. It is your people's land that was taken unfairly from you. There's no way else to look at it.
Do you have long-term goals for the sustainable development of the Batwa community?
Nicole: I really am focusing on education, because I want those kids, the ones who I've been with for 10 years, who are now in secondary school, to be the leaders they need to be, using their voices to advocate for their own people. I'm just the facilitator, so if I can get them in good schools and [to] understand and re-embrace the pride of being Batwa, instead of a shame that they seem to now have, they can then organize and utilize their voices, just like [the] native people in America, South America, [or] the Amazonian people that are organizing together, getting celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio to help them with [the] Amazon frontlines. We need people like Joyce, our kids, and other Batwa leaders to really come together, and that's just a focus of mine, tending [to] those trees and [the] community and helping it to be a model village of beauty, conservation, [and] mitigating climate change by planting these trees and caring for them, because climate is going to affect the poorest and the most marginalized the most. They're on lands that are vulnerable to landslides, because it's very steep. They gave the Batwa the worst land up on the steep slopes, but that's also great land for growing coffee, which is why I'm trying to take what they have and help them get a trade or a livelihood that, over time, they could grow coffee that could then be imported to America, but this stuff is going to take time.
Indigenous environmental knowledge abounds. Can you share a cool Batwa forest tradition with us to close this conversation?
Orishaba: My grandfather would go to the forest, if there was a beehive, and find this special [medicine] to put on his face and arms, and he would climb up the tree without wearing bee suits, after covering himself with this ‘bush medicine,’ then he would start a fire up [in] the tree to smoke out the bees, and he would get all of it [the honey], which was really cool, because there were a lot of bees, so they'd be on him, but he wouldn't get stung.
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