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.