The Batwa Trail in Mgahinga Gorilla Park-A Cultural Encounter

The Batwa Trail in Mgahinga Gorilla Park-A Cultural Encounter

The Batwa Experience in Uganda.

Who are the Batwa People

This trail (the Batwa) in Mgahinga Gorilla National Park presents the earliest people in the forest to various travelers/trekkers. The more contentious term that is often used is “Pygmy”. These people ‘Batwa/indigenous people ’extending from Cameroon into Southwest Uganda were caretakers of the Rain Forests of Africa. Existing in Southwest Uganda long before Bantu Tribes like the Bakiga came here and created villages and farms. The Bantu cut & burnt down the forest to recognize farmlands and grazing sections for their cattle.

This society of the Batwa lived in peace with the forest, leaving a low environmental trail behind them.

The well-known had no villages, built no perpetual structures, and survived as hunters and collectors moving according to ethnic customs and the seasons of the year.

As National Parks was recognized in Uganda, the earliest People (Batwa Pygmies) of the forest, in Southwest Uganda were ejected without reimbursement from the forests. Later incoming, Bantus, unlike the Batwa, were reimbursed since they had land titles.

Since that time, the Batwa have been preserved Refugees surviving as squatters and serfs on other people’s land. They were depicted like the Roman People of Europe as pilfers/robbers, lazy, drunkards, and rustlers. They were a people without a vocal sound, losing their culture, and more importantly, their uniqueness as a people. The Least and the last of Uganda, a people (Batwa origin) without a vocal sound, have succeeded in present times to speak up and out and now their voices are being heard. The Batwa Trail is one trivial step into the Right Course.

The Batwa Cultural Trail: 

The Batwa Trail in Mgahinga Gorilla National Park starts with a hospitable positioning by Batwa Elders, who give you a hint about the Trail. Every culture, and every people group, involving the Batwa, has a beginning, an “in the dawn story.

The Batwa Trail takes place in the gloom of the Virunga Volcanoes, locally called the Mufumbiro Mountains “Mountains that cook”. In Mgahinga Gorilla National Park there are 3 Volcanoes, Mount Muhavura (Muhabura) signifying-the Guide, Mount Gahinga, signifying -Little Stones which implies referring the stones that are plenty at the base of the Volcano and cast off for fencing, and Mount Sabinyo signifying- Old Man’s Teeth, a situation to the heights that prompt one of an old man’s teeth.

Shortly after the climb starts, you will spot the Batwa Elders, kneeling in an advert that has been habitually used to pray for direction & sanctification as they go in/enter the Forest. The Batwa practiced a form of old-dated/style animist religion. Where objects/units/beings such as animals, plants, and trees hold/retain a spiritual core/crux, they also were in tune with units above them, such as the Moon whom they ascribed & turned to for fruitfulness/fertility.

You will know about the nourishing leaves, plants, and berries that are found in the forest that you might not even realize. The Batwa people have used plants, roots, herbs, tree barks that the Batwa have used for centuries, and black crust of ants nests used for smearing fungal infections on the skin.  You spot plants. The Batwa people spot a pharmacy, Most of the treatment work as well as the modern medical ones.

Like all of us, these people (Batwa Pygmies), have a sweet tooth- wild Honey, it is much required/wanted after treatment. You will find out more about how to extract it & eat it in the Forest. Currently, you will find out how to transfer water in bamboo, and how to make a fire in the earliest way. How to quest, construct/assemble shelters and stay in the forest

One thing you will realize as you spot them representing stalking/hunting & tricking/trapping procedures, starting off a fire with a stick, collecting honey, the huts that they stayed in, that they stayed a lifestyle with a shallow impression on their situation & their environments.

The Batwa Trail in Mgahinga Gorilla National Park concludes inside Ngarama Cave, a squat-ceilinged molten rock tube that is below the mountain where the chief used to clutch his councils & where women and children hid during combat/battle. It was also a self-contained hiding area for society.  Water was obtainable. Fires were lit to keep warm and to light up the area. There was a tube for the smoke to outflow from. A group of Batwa women in the darkness carols and performs a song of grief/sorrow about the loss of their darling forest and their craving to home come to what is now Mgahinga Gorilla National Park.

The Batwa Cultural Trail – Our Take

The Batwa Trail in Mgahinga Gorilla National Park is an incomplete answer to the craving of the Batwa People needing to home -come to the Forest. It is a refurbishment of Batwa self-esteem & keeping the Cultural conducts and ethnicity of the Batwa thriving. Like original/native people around the world, they have lost their native land. Showing travelers what their life in the forest was like is positive.

We propose that you exhort from taking the pictures one often spots on social media of a tall Western Tourist with little people. The Batwa warrant more. The showing of admiration and self-esteem is one of them. The Batwa Trail is not scarcity tourism. Shame is not needed but enablement is. Your existence/occurrence makes a small change.

While you are taking in the Batwa Trail, we advise you to stay at Mount Gahinga Lodge. Volcanoes Tours owns the lodge. Their base has constructed the Gahinga Batwa Village and planned for the Batwa, a place where the culture of the Batwa is kept on going. There is a school and a vocational training center, but also they have cultural ventures with the Batwa that take place for clients/visitors from the lodge.

Other activities that can be done here include Gorilla Trekking, day hikes comprising volcano climbs, Bird watching, nature walks, Golden Monkey Tracking, etc. Relish the Batwa Trail and identify more about the ways of the earliest people of the forest, a one-of-a-kind involvement in Uganda- the Pearl of Africa.