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.