A Fish Story…and some final thoughts on Uganda
Only a couple hours before beginning my lonnnnng journey home, I was treated to a yummy dinner of Nile Perch, freshly caught that afternoon by one of my fellow travelers in Lake Victoria. It had been lightly fried by our hotel chef and then finished in the oven and served with rice and an incredible coconut milk sauce (!!!)
Nile Perch is one of those good news/bad news stories. Apparently, Nile Perch was a huge economic boom to Uganda and other countries surrounding Lake Victoria after being introduced by the Brits in the ‘50s. It brought tourism, sport-fishing, and revenue from commercial sources. It also became food and a source of income for local fishermen. Unfortunately, the species is considered a big-time predator and has totally changed the eco-system and species in Lake Victoria.
The perch in this photo was considered small by the fishing guides, relative to sizes caught only a few years back. This is due to over-fishing and use of “illegal” small gauge nets (basically mosquito nets) used by some locals that also catch crabs and other species the perch feed on. Today, the water is patrolled by armed government officials seeking to control the use of small mesh nets and trawlers. Yet, fishing the high-demand perch is the only livelihood for many living on these tiny (one acre) islands in Lake Victoria. Like so many in Uganda, theirs is a daily struggle. Sadly, probably every society or country has people who are displaced or living on the fringes.
The “pygmies” of Uganda are one example. The Batwa, the tribal name for this pygmy group of hunter-gathers, have lived in the Rwanda/Ugandan jungle for, truly, thousands of years. Yes. They are tiny. The people I saw, who were older than 50ish, were under five feet.
A member of the Batwa pygmy group
They lived amongst the gorillas, primarily existing on forest antelope which they would catch with handmade snares. As Dian Fossey discovered, these snares would also – inadvertently – trap or wound gorillas. The story of her destroying the Batwa traps and terrorizing their forest villages is part of The Gorillas in the Mist story.
Thus, when Uganda created the Bwindi National Forest in 1991, 6,700 Batwa were evicted from the forest to protect the gorillas from disease and trapping. (Similar happened on the Rwandan side of the border.) They received no compensation, no land rights and were settled as squatters in strange communities, stigmatized and ill-prepared. Today they live on the fringes with limited access to healthcare or education. They are exploited, sexually and economically. They are not allowed to enter the forest that was their home.
Batwa village
They are somewhat of a tourist attraction. A dancing group performed tribal dances for our camp one night.
I took a tour of their “village," although it is guided by a person from the local community, not a Batwa. And before you ever get to the Batwa (through a break in the trees, up a muddy path, over a hill), you are given a tour of the community, their hospital, school, women’s center, banana distillery--all the visible signs to showcase emerging economic progress.
Women's Center
Similarly, the fishermen of Lake Victoria, particularly those on Makusa – a one acre island that is home to 400 fisherman (very few women), are marginalized. The men live in wooden lean-tos with communal plumbing. There is no medical care and food is primarily the fish they catch. Prostitutes that are brought in have resulted in an unusually high HIV rate.
Fishing village lean-tos
This trip to Uganda to trek to find gorillas was a very special experience (still don’t have quite the right words to capture the emotion of the whole thing.) I travel to see, and to try to learn about, my world. On this trip, I stretched my mind, my body, my willingness to – literally – drink from the same cup as a stranger. And what stays with me, as I travel home, is the peacefulness of the gorilla families . . . how their hierarchy and behavior is so like my own family.
And I remember the hopeful happy faces of the children.
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Thank you to Kathi and the whole team at EIL who take their time to make this blog possible. I write, and suddenly it is on the world wide web!!!
And thank you to those who have read and followed along. Writing this blog and knowing you may read it, makes me more observant. It makes me consider more closely what I am seeing and feeling. It makes me more “in the moment." And to those who have asked: No, I don’t know what’s next. Open to ideas. Anyone for Papua New Guinea??
