Kibale National Forest
>What does it feel like to hold a machete?
It feels amazing. Like you can conquer the world.
It is our first day in the Kibale National Forest. We’re hot and dirty. But we want to keep going. We venture deep into the bush, past subsistence farmers, baboons, and banana groves. The villagers here, if you can call this place a village, seem dumbfounded by our presence. Some of the children wave and run towards us. Others just stare, choosing not to react when we smile or wave.
By the reactions, it is clear that they aren’t used to seeing outsiders. The roads are thick with mud. As a thunderstorm rains down, what passes as a road turns into slick oil and sticky clay.
When the road disappear, we park the car and march down a small dirt path, over trenches, through more banana trees and roosters, navigating over small bridges made out of wood. We come across a group of men making posho and beans while the rain buckets down. I ask one of the farmers if it is alright if I take his machete and give it a go. He agrees, and slowly, I grab a handful of elephant grass and hack away.
To be a subsistence farmer in southwestern Uganda, you better be willing to work hard for less than $1 a day…or for nothing at all. You cannot count on saving money to pay for a child’s school fees. And children they have, usually somewhere between 6 to 8, assuming that more babies mean more people that can help tend the fields. It is also assumed that some of the children will not make it through their childhood.
At one point during an interview, I ask, “what do you do for fun?”
The man, Kawmanakeulto, looks stumped.
“That is a very western question,” says Geoffrey, our translator. “They do not doing anything for fun. They simply want to stay alive.”
The people who live in and around the Kibale forest hold onto the hope that they have enough of a harvest to feed their children. They hope that the monkeys, baboons and wild pigs don’t dig up the potatoes until they are ripe. They hope that the security situation with Congolese rebels or animals poachers does not flare up.
As we’re leaving, I notice my translator hand $20,000 shillings, a little more than $10, to the people we’ve interviewed. Afterwards, he tells us it is a “location fee.” I am a bit angry, knowing that once money enters into the equation, it’s slippery slope between truth and fiction.
But the truth is that we’ll spend four times that amount at the guest house we’re staying at for one night.
And when you’re out here, everything seems to be a negotiation. So you simply try to understand the situation, keep your eyes and ears open, and learn as much as you can along the way.
-Jon
jon @ April 13, 2007