Dispatches
Kisoro, part II: Going organic for the gorillas; dancing on the edge of DRC
April 7, 2008
The following morning we returned to the Gorilla Organization (GO) offices in Kisoro and met with Regina Sanyu, coordinator for GO’s Organic Farming Association projects in Uganda. Regina recently joined the Kisoro office from Rwanda where she had worked for 3 years as a part of a program that successfully trained 5,000 farmers in sustainable, organic techniques.
What does organic farming have to do with gorillas? Encroachment on gorilla habitat for the creation of new farmland has been and is likely to remain the biggest threat to the earth’s remaining gorilla population. In short, organic methods produce higher crop yields by leveraging farm by-products such as compost and manure alongside crop management techniques such as complimentary planting and crop rotation, eliminating the need for costly synthetic pesticides and fertilizers that compromise soil quality and helpful animal/insect populations. Threats of encroachment are lowered when farmers have more fruitful harvests on existing farmlands - they can make their endeavors more efficient and profitable without expanding their acreage.
You’re noticing a theme, I hope… for gorillas to survive, the people near the gorilla habitat must thrive. Even if you like animals more than people (and I know there are a few of you out there), you have to admit this is a pretty smart win-win strategy for creatures and humankind alike.
The first farmer we visited was a woman who raised rabbits, chickens and goats, providing them with shelters of elevated pens with slat floors, a simple system that makes harvesting manure for fertilizer a much cleaner, higher yield process. She also had a simple yet effective solar water purification system, storing collected water in clear bottles and placing them on a silver sheet of corrugated metal which acted as solar collector. After a day in the sun, the bottle water gets hot enough to be purified and safely drink without sacrificing a stitch of fuel or infusing a drop of chemicals.
Rattling down the road in the back of GO’s Land Cruiser toward our second farm, I hadn’t realized how close we were to the historically trouble fraught eastern edge of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Our first stop had been to a farm 2 kilometers away from the Uganda/DRC border, while the second farm we visited abutted the border itself, an area through which many Congolese fled DRC as refugees in times of conflict. Many residents view the border between the two nations less as delineation between nation states and more as a region in and of itself with its own sense of “locals”, with Congolese living peacefully and productively just over the border in Uganda without traditional immigration documentation, quietly paying rent and contributing positively to their new community.
Regina was very proud of the woman who ran the second farm on the edge of DRC - an exemplary participant in Uganda’s nascent organic farming program. As we walked her farm, Regina spoke at length at how she had attended every training seminar and actively teaches and supports other farmers in the program. In addition, she had provided sanctuary to DRC refugees on her property - up to 25 people at a time - feeding them from the bounty of her crops and livestock.
To acknowledge her efforts, Regina arranged for her to be a recipient of a fuel-efficient, firewood saving stove. A design made out of local clay that can reduce firewood consumption up to 70%, Regina herself committed her own time and labor to help assemble the stove for this very deserving recipient.
GO has provided over 3,000 firewood saving stoves and planted more than half a million trees around national parks, lowering the pressure of encroachment and illegal deforestation of gorilla habitat while (theme again, people) providing smart, simple technologies that provide economic relief + improve the air quality for residents around gorilla habitat.
Everyone, all together now:
For gorillas to survive, the people near the gorilla habitat must thrive. Three cheers to the Gorilla Organization for investing in a grass roots powered survive/thrive approach to environmental protection. Supporting people and communities to make more sustainable choices is a common sense success story of the best kind: a bright light for conservation strategies in an extremely challenging environment.
Kisoro, part I: Averting extinction by educating and empowering communities
April 7, 2008
We headed southwest toward Uganda’s shared borders with DRC and Rwanda, passing through mountainous, heavily cultivated farmlands that supply more than half of Uganda’s produce from a verdant patchwork of terraced plots that appear to cover every inch of the region. As daylight flickered to a close, we ascended through the fog of bamboo-filled Echulya Forest Preserve before dropping into Kisoro, a town located near Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, home to one of the world’s last populations of critically endangered mountain gorillas.
The next day we joined the morning commute of pedestrians, bicycles and motorcycles to meet the staff at Gorilla Organization’s Kisoro office.
Gorilla Organization (GO) works internationally to save the world’s last gorillas from extinction. Their conservation strategies target long term poverty alleviation and environmental education projects in poor communities around gorilla habitats, involving communities in conservation initiatives, providing viable alternatives to the unsustainable use of forest resources.
GO’s hallmark is small, grass roots projects run by local partners, strengthened by the Organization’s mindful management practices that include monthly funding and reporting cycles and a high level of communication between headquarters and local programs, placing strong emphasis on developing local capacity in Africa.
Sam Nsingwire, Ugandan Program Manager at GO’s Kisoro, gave us an overview of local programs before leading us off for a tour of projects. Our first stop was the Kisoro Beekeeper’s Cooperative Society, an organization that supports this traditional trade by educating local beekeepers in new techniques and equipment that make harvest of bee products safer and more efficient along with providing processing, packaging and marketing support for their products, thereby enabling community members to transform a long established subsistence endeavor into a lucrative business.
David, a farmer on the collective’s board, gave us a tour of his farm - an organic Eden shaded by over 100 gigantic avocado trees. He grows coffee as well as myriad vegetables and fruits in the rich black soil of his property. A 3rd generation beekeeper, he keeps his bees happy with shade, a ready source of water and a yellow moon flower tree with gracefully bowed butter-hued trumpets (heck, they’re so pretty I’d pollinate them).
David has a mix of traditional, older apiaries alongside the newer designs. As familiar and sentimental as he might be with the older designs, he readily embraces the new apiaries that have been introduced by the GO supported Beekeeping Cooperative as they allow him to harvest honey more efficiently, reaping a bigger yield and sparing his hardworking bees the hive destruction required to harvest traditional apiaries
Later that day, we stopped by Mutolere Primary School to visit a compelling program that GO helped establish to encourage environmental awareness in the next generation. Wildlife Clubs of Uganda and Rwanda are extra curricular conservation groups whose members are taught sustainable environmental education via educator presentations as well as theater activities including song and dance. In addition, students are exposed to sustainable agricultural practices through cultivating organic food crops + planting native tree species on school grounds and in the surrounding community. Mutolere students involved in the program enjoy Wildlife Club benefits including weekly school-based activities, a quarterly newsletter and field trips to the country’s national parks.
Dennis Agaba, the lead teacher, swiftly assembled the Wildlife Club members, touring us through their recently planted raised bed gardens. Dennis then informed us that the club members wanted to sing to us. The voices of 80 children rose in a moving call and response song with the bright, clear tones of a young girl calling the lead. Wildlife club members acted out lyrics about planting and preservation as the other students gathered around us to watch + listen.
Wildlife Clubs have proven to be a unique opportunity to virally message habitat preservation and sustainable practices - members take what they learn about conservation into the schoolyard, the community and their homes, educating friends and family to issues + alternatives to deforestation, encroachment + poaching.
It was exciting to see GO’s remarkably successful grass roots programs in action -evolving traditional beekeeping into profitable venture and educating the next generation in thoughtful stewardship are progressive programs that serve the communities, environment and species whose futures hang in the balance.
Mihingo Lodge, part III: Kids acting out in the name of conservation
March 19, 2008
That afternoon, we joined resident manager Kate Ward in a trip into the village to observe an environmental conservation class that she teaches at the primary school.
A volunteer teacher who uses Honey Fund dollars for supplies, Kate talks with the children about the National Park and the value of its animal population to the community as a natural resource for education/beauty for the community as well as the reason that tourist dollars come into their village to fund key projects including education.
What I found most striking is how very little these kids knew of the animals in their midst yet how quickly they started making the connection. Kate used a whole series of teaching techniques including story telling, games, songs and acting… it was hard to not join in:
What makes an eland special? Big horns? Yes! Big horns! Everyone be an eland and show me your big horns!
The children’s conservation class was followed by the adult literacy program which Kate also teaches. We were advised that adults were shy about our observing their class, so we didn’t linger, but Kate let us know that she was pleased to see class attendance increase. The weekly class usually starts with a handful of adults, but over the course of a session, up to 40 adults from the village assemble to listen in. Many of the adults in the village cannot read or write, so filling out basic school forms for their children an overwhelming, humiliating task. Kate has seen the excitement and pride in the faces of the adults in her class as they learn to spell their own children’s names.
With its mindful participation and support of environmental, conservation, education and community outreach, the committed owners and staff of Mihingo Lodge prove that a luxury safari destination can also be an exemplary environmental steward and community advocate.
Mihingo Lodge, part II: Take care of your neighbors, scavengers though they may be
March 19, 2008
I probably should have let them know that I can be very hard to wake up.
I came to at 5:45 AM with the voice of hotel proprietor Ralph at my door courteously PLEADING for me to rise so that our group could get underway for hyena tracking. This curious activity requires an early roll call - hyenas are easiest to locate during the pre-dawn return to their dens after an evening’s hunt.
At Lake Mburo National Park headquarters, we meet our hyena tracking guide, friendly park ranger Andrew, and we head off toward the hyena dens directly.
A few things to know - spotted hyenas subcontract their den construction. Anteaters do the dirty work, burrowing into the ground in search of insects - when the bug well runs dry, anteaters move on, hyenas take up residence.
We’d walked perhaps 15 minutes before meeting up with the first silhouette in the sepia of pre dawn. Andrew made calls that mimicked a hyena kill announcement, communication back to the pack that it’s mealtime. It clearly piqued their interest - more trotted into view.
I had figured, like so many wild creatures, that they’d run from a stinky pack of coffee addled humans with noisy cameras, and while they did seem wary, I wouldn’t call them afraid. Flash photography didn’t faze them and some even seemed curious about us, sniffing the air and taking steps toward us…. which reads as lurking calculation.
The beasts have a brazen edginess and a misunderstood bad boy charm - magnetic, but you somehow know to not turn your back.
Amidst the tracking, Mihingo Lodge owner Ralph explained a predator/scavenger conservation program that he’s very keen on launching in the nearby communities. Seems that local farmers blame the park’s relatively small leopard population on a number of livestock kills and, in response, farmers poison the remaining carcasses in hopes of killing the predator that perpetrated the act. Leopards are at risk, but more often than not, it’s the scavengers who are poisoned - hyenas + vultures who play an integral part of the park’s ecosystem.
Ralph’s leopard and hyena project proposal is to pay farmers for livestock lost to verified predator kills and eliminate the practice of poisoning that sabotages the scavenger population. Farmers would need to have suspected predator kills inspected + verified in the first 24 hrs after the incident. If it’s determined that the kill fits the profile of a leopard attack, the farmer would be paid for the livestock loss on the spot and the carcass would be removed in whole immediately, lessening the farmer’s drive for retribution and eliminating the vehicle for poisoning. It seems to be a well thought out solution that doesn’t punish the farmer or the wildlife… now just the matter of getting funding and implementation before the predator and scavenger population is poisoned out of existence…
Mihingo Lodge, part I: High style, low impact - everybody wins
March 19, 2008
From Nile Safari Lodge, we caught a lift back into Kampala for the night. We were met the next morning by Mihingo Lodge proprietor, Ralph Schenk, who spirited us westward toward the lodge and Lake Mburo National Park.
Conversation in the car was lively and Ralph, who is also co-owner of Banana Boat craft stores with his partner Suni, is an incredible source of information and opinions about many issues challenging Africa. His upbringing was a mix of influences of Africa, where he was born, and Europe, where his parents were raised and he was educated. At age 19, Ralph took an epic road trip over the whole of Africa, an odyssey that galvanized his passion for the continent. He focused his collegiate + graduate studies along with volunteer endeavors on economics, agriculture, conservation and alternative energy, mindful of what education would best serve the environment, community as well as his entrepreneurial interests in Africa.
We uneventfully crossed from the north to the south side of the equator (we opted to spare Ralph our tourist glee as he’d made the journey countless times). In the town of Lyantonde, we turned onto a dirt road toward Nshara Gate into Lake Mburo National Park and our hotel shuttle turned into a game drive as zebra, African buffalo and warthogs seemed to spring up from the ether across the park’s grassland.
Situated on a hilltop adjacent to Lake Mburo Park, Mihingo Lodge’s commanding views of the park and nearby lakes are a feast to the eyes. Ralph and Suni came up with an initial design that embraced high end safari lodge style and services with environmentally smart design. They created lodge facilities and bungalows that optimize the site’s natural attributes for both aesthetic beauty and ease of harnessing and harvesting solar power and rainwater to fuel lodge operations.
Guest quarters have been crafted with the seemingly improbable combination of spectacular vistas and supreme privacy. In décor, a tasteful minimalism prevails, yielding to the visual draw of the natural surroundings. Bedrooms and bathrooms are almost imperceptibly screened, providing unprecedented views of everything except the neighbors (as lovely as they might be).
Mihingo Lodge established a program, initially fueled by retail sales of local honey, to serve the community just outside the park gates. The Honey Fund benefits the Akashenshero area, providing an educational resource fund for Rurambira primary school, offering volunteer-run environmental education and adult literacy programs. The fund has recently assisted in tending to major medical issues that have faced community residents including reconstructive surgery to child’s cleft palate and an operation to repair a local girl’s bowed leg.
The afternoon of our arrival, Ralph took us on a trip to nearby Kazumi Lookout for a visual tour and history of the surrounding area and that evening, we convened in the lodge’s open air dining room overlooking a watering hole in Lake Mburo National Park. With impala and eland as our inspiration, we too sought refreshment. Over bottles of Nile Special, the boys and I determined that we’d spend the following morning tracking hyenas in the park and spend the afternoon checking out Honey Fund projects at the local primary school - opportunities to see how all the lodge’s neighbors are faring.
Nile Safari Lodge: Take me to the river
March 19, 2008
We loaded up Rhino Fund Uganda’s seasoned Land Cruiser, strapped our gear to the roof rack + headed to Nile Safari Lodge. We relished a few stretches of tarmac, though our path was primarily hard packed dirt as we passed through small towns and herds of massive- horned Ugandan cattle on our drive toward Masindi.
Our route traversed a portion of Murchison National Park and, for the first several kilometers, scores of baboons filled the roads, chastening our noisy advance by loping into the woods, offering only their bright red primate butts as they disappeared into thick foliage of the park.
Approaching the lodge, we caught glimpses of Lake Albert before turning north toward the Victoria Nile. A final dusty lumber brought us to reception at the Nile Safari Lodge where we were met by friendly faces bearing cool white towels with a hint of eucalyptus. The volume of dirt peeled from arms and faces?
Oh my.
Sorry about your towels…
A short walk from reception leads to a magnetic location just out front of the dining room: a vista across the River Nile into Murchison National Park from a comfortably appointed platform shaded by a massive cluster fig tree teeming with vervet monkeys - a nice spot for a cool drink, if I do say so myself.
GeoLodges, the parent company of Nile Safari Lodge, utilizes local materials to build their properties whenever possible, so the timber, stones for masonry, thatching materials and skilled labor are all sourced from the community. Nile Safari Lodge collects solar power for electricity; other lodges in the Geolodge family leverage water catchment systems and use even more substantial alternative energy programs on more recently built properties.
Geolodges also has a community outreach program called EarthworkS that assists local residents with vocational training including a project that assists women from Mubaku and other villages adjacent to Nile Safari Lodge in earning an income that allows them to work from their homes, allowing them to care for their children and tend household responsibilities while earning an outside income. Bead for Life is an environment/community friendly program that sources used magazines as materials that local women craft into colorful beads. These beads are strung into jewelry and sold at retail outlets (including the lodge). Profits benefit the bead makers and help sustain the EarthworkS program supporting further community development.
EarthworkS also assists a local farm collective that promotes the sale of village produce to the greater community and the Nile Safari Lodge where the menus are primarily locally sourced. The results are multifold – money for supplies go back into the community while minimizing fossil fuels expended in bringing outside supplies to the lodge property.
We took a boat tour of the fabled Nile the following morning. A light mist rose off the river and the lodge’s low profile bungalows blended cohesively into the papyrus-addled riparian landscape. The portion of the Nile adjacent to Murchison National Park is wildlife rich: hippopotamus, kingfisher, crocodiles, water buck appeared in profusion and we counted ourselves fortunate to linger a few minutes in the presence of the endangered, elusive shoe bill stork.
Upon our return, I bee lined to the cool open air of my bungalow’s private outdoor shower, retiring to the porch with a cup of coffee as an African elephant trolled the marshes of Murchison Park with a few white-feathered hitchhikers perched atop its back.
Both the birds and I had found fine landing spots, indeed.
Ziwa Ranch Rhino Sanctuary: Becoming okay with the AK…47, that is.
March 7, 2008
We headed north on the Kampala/Gulu road toward the Ziwa Ranch Rhino Sanctuary.
The day was moving to dusk and as we drove toward park headquarters. The day patrol rangers bike toward us as they close their shifts. Charged with protecting the rhinos from poachers, rangers must have equal footing in confrontations – explaining the AK-47s slung over their shoulders as they slowly pedaled toward the main gate - they smile and wave as we motor past.
Head ranger Godfried gave us a tour of the headquarters and a quick history of the property. Formerly a cattle ranch, a local rancher donated 35 square kilometers to the Rhino Fund Uganda to establish the sanctuary. A sizeable gift from the EU allowed them to install a solar-powered electric fence around the perimeter of the site and 4 white rhinos from Kenya were then brought to the property. More recently, Disney’s Animal Kingdom in Florida donated an additional pair of white rhinos.
That evening, we met Rhino Fund Uganda executive director Heidi Cragg – a plucky, sun burnished South African woman with a passion for wildlife conservation.
Her projects include a rhinoceros breeding project (their first calf is due in weeks), community education + outreach programs along with sourcing the local community for rangers and sanctuary support staff.
In Africa, rhinos are hunted by poachers for the exceptional price they can get for their horns, valued for their perceived medicinal power. Remarkably, rhino horn is actually made of hair attached to the skin of the rhino, not the bone, so it can be harvested without killing the rhino. Bullets, however, are cheaper than rhinoceros tranquilizers. Rhino advocates had taken to the practice of removing the horn before it was discovered that poachers would kill hornless rhinos to spite conservationists. The message is simple - you deprive me of my bounty, I’ll kill the animal anyway. Bush meat poachers ply the edges of the electric fence, running snares underneath onto the sanctuary property to capture bushbuck, diker and wild pig. Farmers quietly maneuver their cattle onto the property’s edge to graze illegally – rangers “arrest” cows on a regular basis and she’s discovered that recent interloping herds have been the property of local public officials making enforcement a frustrating affair, to say the least.
Supported solely by donation, the Rhino Fund’s budget is unpredictable at best. A recent spate of dried up coffers forced Heidi to give up 24 hour ranger patrols, leaving the rhinos unprotected from poachers during the evenings, incurring a series of dread-filled, sleepless nights before the Uganda Wildlife Authority donated 4 rangers so Rhino Fund could resume 24 hour patrols.
Heidi shared her plans to make the sanctuary less reliant on donor funding through ecotourism, attracting more visitors by expanding and improving guest facilities with the construction of a restaurant, bar and swimming pool along with more overnight accommodations. She’s working to increase her white rhino count, introducing black rhinos along with broad grazing, non-cattle mammals, such as zebra, to manage grassland overgrowth and offer more variety in wildlife viewing.
Room and board are available to visitors and volunteers and the predominantly solar powered facilities offered presently are clean and simple - with the menagerie of wildlife, visitors spend of their waking hours viewing rhinos, hippos, bushbuck, vervit monkeys and marveling at the prolific birdlife on the property.
A tireless champion of the sanctuary, natural resource and wildlife conservation, Heidi sees daily challenges, both planned + unexpected (flat tires and bush fires, anyone?), as a shot of adrenaline, the stuff that makes life interesting, announcing, unprompted, “I just love it here”.
Papercraft: Some call it rubbish; we call it renewal
March 6, 2008
Harriet turned the car from the paved main road onto hard packed dirt. Driving toward the workshop, Harriet waves at a man carrying an empty canvas bag that smiles and nods back at her. “that man, he supplies us with the banana leaves we use for the paper”.
Papercraft is an employee-owned recycled + natural papermaking business that promotes self-sufficiency for its employees, many of whom are women who are given training and employment in an environmentally gentle trade.
A simple brick structure with a corrugated roof built on a slope. Harriet walks us through the paper making process – they use elephant grass, banana + pineapple fibers- cleverly repurposing offal from other trades that would have otherwise wound up in the landfill. The materials make for paper with a hearty, textured, organic quality. They source shredded ledger and business paper from a local bank to make their recycled paper and these have a smoother, finished look.
Once dried, the paper is turned into a number of finished products that the shop employees create – picture frames, stationary, decorative boxes, tags, photo albums. These products are then sold to retail outlets including Banana Boat African Craft stores.
Back in Kampala, we visited a Banana Boat African Craft store and met Ralph and Suni (pronounced “shoe-knee”),owners of the Kampala-based retail operation. This progressively-minded, entrepreneurial couple provide many services to their employees + suppliers beyond the traditional exchange of goods and services. Unlike many other craft retailers, they pay their suppliers in cash, not consignment.
Banana Boat stores promote sustainable + renewable materials and are particularly supportive of businesses such as Papercraft who actively train and educate community members toward self sufficiency. Banana Boat, in fact, provided a microloan to the employees at Papercraft so that they could buy their business. Bank funded loans can charge small businesses 25-40% interest, while the funds from Banana Boat to Papercraft are no interest loans that Ralph and Suni offer to employees and suppliers with the understanding that they are simply paid back in agreed installments every month.
A compliment to their successful retail business, Ralph and Suni invest in the potential in people. The loans they’ve offered through Banana Boat catalyze profound changes in the local community – employees can buy a business, fueling their self sufficiency and confidence without sacrificing the environment or accepting undue financial risks. In turn, Papercraft employee/owners provide their village with positive examples of previously untrained community members who have transformed into contributors to commerce through craft.