Watkinson in Uganda: June 2016

Thursday, June 30, 2016

Good bye Golden Monkey! Hello Queen Elizabeth Park

Missing Golden Monkey Guest House but the Pumba Cottages are great. Chimp trekked this morning and hiked past tea plantations. Cruised the Kizanga Channel this afternoon. Game drive tomorrow!!

Tuesday, June 28, 2016

Batwa encounters

A couple of days ago, as a matter of chance, I met the “first Mutwa to be educated”. Mutwa is the singular of Batwa—the Twa people of Central Africa, also known as pygmies. The Twa live in Uganda, Burundi, Congo and Rwanda. His name is Gad, and he graduated recently from Kabale University. His parents like in the Echoyu forest near Kisoro—a forest but not a national park. Most Batwa were evicted from their nomadic forest-dwelling when the Bwindi and Mgahinga parks were created in the 90’s. Today they are among the worst off in Uganda, a despised landless minority, illiterate, reduced to begging and living in squalor.

Last year, a wandering group of tipsy Batwa musicians appeared on the road in front of the Golden Monkey playing broken guitars and various other improvised instruments. One had a large bamboo didgeridoo, which I think was the “molimo” described by Colin Turnbull in The Forest People. They showed up after one of their group, his pockets full of avocados he had found on the ground, saw us and tried to beg for a few shillings. The dogs at Golden Monkey went berserk. They hate Batwa. The music and dancing was not at all bad, however. A Ugandan standing next to me pointed to the dancer, who was shorter than the rest, no more than four feet tall. “I think that is one of the genuine pygmies” he said

This year, while visiting the wonderful Mgahinga Community Development Organization, we went for a short hike (of 3 hours) to visit a Batwa settlement. We walked through farms and fields, inhabited by farmers and animal herders. On one occasion, Festo, our host, tried to defuse a fight between a boy herding cows and the owners of the wheat they were feasting on. Deep in these fields was a camp pf three or four tiny huts, mostly round, made of bamboo and eucalyptus branches with the leaves still on. The roofs were tarps with wheat stalks thatched on top. About 15 women, teenage boys and children huddled close together while we spoke with them, mostly through Festo and the matriarch of the clan, Jen. There are some Batwa who are instantly recognizable as a different ethnicity than others in Southwest Uganda. Others look much like the other groups you meet here. Some were short, but not tiny. Others not so much. They spoke the same Rufambila (Kinyarwanda) as everyone else around these parts, though with an accent. The people of the region consider the BaTwa to be an ancient, more primitive race of people. Another view is that the pygmies are a class in African societies—they played a role in hunting and gathering of wild foods for the farmers who essentially own them as slaves. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

A farmer had allowed them to camp here, partly in exchange for labor in his wheat and potato fields—they are share-croppers, basically. Festo said that they survive in part by finding leftover potatoes after the harvest. A woman was weaving a basket of grass and the plastic fibers from a yellow seed bag. It was beautiful and well made, and the girls in our group took turns working on it. We asked a few questions, and got meaningful answers, sometimes with the assent of the whole group. “Where are the men?” I asked. Festo explained that some had died. One was in prison for killing a member of another clan in a dispute between Batwa families.

They sang and danced for us, apparently enjoying themselves in doing so, accompanied by drumming on a Gerry-can. We bought some baskets and took photos of the women who had made them, laboriously, by hand. One took three weeks to make, and sold for about $4.

There are people who exploit these people, and people who want to help them. It’s hard to say what they need, though. Do they need food or land? Work or education? Do they need a forest to return to? They have essentially nothing, so anything is a start, I suppose. Gad is an example of the hope for his people—a proud Mutwa man who has proven that his people can succeed by the standards of the world he now occupies, who is bent on helping his people survive and integrate into society. Like Frederick Douglass or Phyllis Wheatley, he has done what many here think impossible.

I am happy to greet you and welcome you and hope you will sleep at my home.

In case you decide to come to Uganda, which you absolutely should and probably will, here are some things to expect.

You will get into pretty serious conversations with people that result in invitations to sleep at their house.

I have met at least three people this week who are involved in some sort of community development project. Ugandans are out to save the world, and given the incredible energy they have, they’ll likely succeed. Maybe it is the dozens of various types of bananas everyone eats.

One Ugandan I met explained his banana-fueled project to educate the marginalized Batwa minority. Some still eke out a furtive existence in the forest, others are relegated to sharecropping for land owners, others are simply beggars in the towns. The common denominator is that almost none of their children go to school, learn to read, or have many skills in the modern world. This particular fellow I met had a sort of religious epiphany up on Mt. Muhabura, which led him to decide to build a school for the Batwa. I think he is also interested in saving their souls through religious conversion, but I did not ask much about that.

This fellow and I exchanged numbers and email addresses, and he tried to get me to come see his school. I did not have a huge amount of confidence in him, and wanted to ask around a bit, and do some investigation before exposing students to an un-explored experience, but it was hard to shake him He has texted me at least 4 times, called me, and suggested that I visit his school, and then come sleep at his house. That last part sort of caught me off guard.

Anyway, I have been invited to sleep at other people’s houses since then, so apparently this is not uncommon. I always decline, because I think that this is a kind of overboard hospitality probably really taxes the very kind people here, and because it inevitably leads to some commitment that I may not want to make.

Another question I have had to field four or more times is something along the lines of “do you have these crops in your country?” or “what crops do you grow?” or “do people dig in the USA?” I reassure my interlocutor that we do indeed dig, though much of our farming is done by machinery. “Tractors?” he will say, excitedly. “Yes, tractors.” I get the sense that John Deere would go over favorably in Uganda.

I also explain the seasons as best I can. In June it is very much like here. 20 degrees (Celsius), sunny, but it sometimes rains and sometimes doesn’t. It is hot in July and August 35 degrees or more. In October it is again like this, except the leaves on the trees change to yellow, red and orange. Then from December to March it can be below 0, and sometimes we have up to a meter of snow. “How do the plants live?” Good question. Later I thought of making analogy with the lungfish—when its river or pond dries up, it sleeps in the mud until it rains. The best I could do is to say that some die, and need to be replanted—tomatoes, for example. Others are dormant all winter, like apple trees. They bloom in April, grow fruit in the long days of summer, and then the apples ripen very sweet as the weather gets cold. I explain that in my region we grow corn, but not sorghum, apples but not oranges, avacados, mangoes, etc. And that there are cattle, mostly for milk cheese and butter, but few goats.

One advantage I have is that I have experienced Spring, before. And it seems to be always Spring or early Summer here. But the people of this country have never experienced Winter, so explaining it is like trying to explain “Red” to someone who was born blind. A common reaction to the whole idea of winter, is “So you store up your food for this time?” How do I explain that most of my food comes, via a supermarket, from California or Mexico or Florida? “People used to preserve vegetables and fruit for winter, and smoke meat and fish, but now we transport a lot of food from one place to another—so in the cold season, we buy our food from the warm places”

These explanations are met with skepticism. I think that the burning questions are “why would someone live in such a place? Why buy food, when you can grow it? These are valid questions, and gazing at the verdant hills and towering mountains, I wonder what sort of answer I could give.

Soccer rocks

Yesterday we played a soccer game between Mgahinga Primary School teachers, students and assorted Americans, vs another school who had green jerseys with the name of a Norwegian or possibly Danish company. One of their students had cleats with no laces. Two of ours shared a pair of cleats and a pair of skateboard shoes—i.e, each wore one cleat. Some went barefoot, others preferred to remove one shoe to kick out of the goalie box or from the corner. One teacher wore loafers.

The field was similar to any soccer pitch, in that it had some grass. It had no lines, what counted as sidelines was largely a matter of individual judgment, and the goals were two pairs of stones, convenient because the goalie can sit on one while waiting.

There were a number of large rocks strewn throughout the field, and clearly many more just below the surface. The field undulated like a living room where the carpet was put down last, on top of the tables and chairs. Sometimes you’d kick, and miss completely. Sometimes the ball would ricochet wildly, maybe right back in your face. Like bumper pool. I found it prudent to keep one eye on the ball, and one on the ground where my foot was going to land. Many patches of cow manure added a textural element. While quite dry on top, I later found that they were nevertheless somewhat fresh. Small round balls of goat feces lay in meandering lines, tracing the movements of their creators. The field also varied in elevation about five feet.

Our opponent’s goal was at the verge of a field that was more uneven, and covered with boulders. There were rocks of about two feet across every four feet or so, in all directions. So when you made a shot, the ball went flying into the stone field, and bounced this way and that for a while.

Our goal was near the path/road, and always full of 3 to 5 year old children, sitting with their backs to the field. There were often small babies sitting alone in the middle of the field, thoughtfully fondling sticks or pebbles. On one occasion, the green team scored a beautiful goal, with the added bonus of seeing the ball hit the back of a toddler’s bald head so squarely, that she went crashing forward, head-butting another toddler. Two small children fell casualty in this way, and several others took one to the body or legs.

Then there were the sheep and goats. A teenager with a stick had directed his goats and sheep to the spot to graze, so they foraged freely, sometimes jumping out of the way of a ball. I fantasized about hurtling over one, driving to the goal. Another teenage boy showed up with some cows, and seemed annoyed that people were using this soccer field, which he wished to use as his cows’ dinner/toilet, for actual soccer.

There was a sort of dirt path that traversed the field diagonally, which I did not really notice till a Boda Boda (motorcycle taxi) with a woman in a spangled head-cloth on back, raced along it in the middle of a vigorous offensive by the green team, the ball narrowly missing the passenger’s head. The Boda is ubiquitous. It is not at all unusual to see them in the National Parks, buzzing past elephants on the way to deliver someone to work.

It was fun to play soccer, at which I do not excel. Until, that is, I tried to kick the ball and fell short, my toe digging into the uneven turf, my knee feeling like a hot poker was driven into it. I fell to the ground, hugging my knee. For a moment or two I wondered if I had finally torn the last bit of something important. The game continued, and the thought of the merciless pounding my skull would take from a ball at any moment got me moving. I stood up shakily and limped to join the crowd of behind the goal. “Ni meza” I said. “I’m OK”.

Mgahinga

On the slopes of Mt. Gahinga, the group continued to work with the Mgahinga Community Development Organisation at their school. The travelers introduced the students and faculty to the computers donated by the UCONN doctors. Later in the day, we played soccer in a field filled with rocks, boulders, goats, cow paddies and most importantly giddy children!

After a night sleeping at the camp at the gate of Mgahinga Gorilla National Park, we taught another day reading the books Rainbow Fish and The Ants Go Marching.

Back down in town, we attempted to get the endless dry season dust that blows all over the mountain from our clothes and hair.

Tomorrow, we sadly leave Kisoro, friends and partner schools for a few days of game drives, a cruise in the Kazonga Channel and chimp trekking before heading home.

We may leave Kisoro and wash out the dust but Uganda will always be in our hearts!