Ever on the border, never yet across. The DRC looms tauntingly across rivers, across the lake, teasingly across the rift. From the river bank, I am just meters away from Congolese soil. On a plantation, I stand on the border line risking arrest on the other side. From the mountain peaks, I see the living lava of Nyiragongo burning red into the night. These are stories of moments on the border, but not quite across.
Bundibujyo and the Barracks
Down a bumpy dirt road that takes you to the border of the DRC and Uganda lives a place where people, all those naturally existing things that we call "the environment", and conflict collide. I was with George (the Community Conservation Warden) and Wilson (a Law Enforcement Ranger) again, this time I was driving...to which George politely commented on his own surprise that I am "actually a good driver." But, I guess you should see the children in some of these villages when they see me pass through - "There's a Mzungu! The Mzungu's a woman! And she's driving!!" I guess any one of those three things would be incredibly rare on their own, but to see it all in one event must be the talk of the town for days.
So George and Wilson and I are cruising down this bumpy road on the southern side of Semuliki National Park. This time everything's green and covered in peoples' gardens, but for some time the road follows the boundary of the park to our right. I see piles of wood stacked up along the road just outside of the park and wonder where the timber's coming from. Some of the country's last remaining old-growth mahogany dwells in those forests. The villagers wouldn't cut mahogany for firewood (it would be crazy to burn through money like that), but there are definitely more than a few people eying those trees for the stacks of currency that they're worth.
What the road leads us to is a little border town, Butogo. Wilson slips into the village and starts to put the word out - meeting under the mango tree, a researcher's in town. Giving the word time to spread, George and I make for the border...the River Semuliki. It's mid-afternoon on a Tuesday and people big and small are in the river bathing, cleaning, swimming, playing. The West Bank is the DRC, the East Bank is Uganda.
I touch the water and eye the other side. George tells me how here, the River Semuliki is also changing its flow from time to time, cutting deeper into some banks, letting others go. Crops are lost to its waters, sometimes surfacing in international lands. Again, the ritual of goat gifting to the neighboring chief is necessary to regain access to lands and harvests.
The problems in this village are greater than just riparian erosion though. Just over the river sits a series of grass thatched huts. Staring at it from the top of a small hill on the Ugandan side, is another set of huts. Uniform like a housing development in a U.S. suburb. The Congolese huts belong not to the villagers, but to the FARDC. Similarly, the Ugandan huts were built for the UPDF. Military barracks staring each other down across a lackadaisical serpentine river filled with splashing children in their underoos.
This part of Uganda was ADF territory not so many years ago. The Ugandan government quashed most of that through oppressive violence, pushing the ADF combatants into the DRC (a.k.a. the Watalinga sector of Virunga National Park, home of the okapi). Through a series of historical events that I know little about, the ADF somehow became the ADF-Nalu and there they are terrorizing the northern sector of Virunga NP. That's why the UPDF barrack had been established in Butogo, but they tell me that it's now been abandoned.
Never you fear though, the soldiers are not far away. An intelligence officer gave me a rough sketch of just how many barracks are situated up and down this DRC-Uganda border, each one stacked with some 700 odd soldiers. I wonder in my head if population density counts in this region account for the massive military population stationed here as well. Think about the resource pressures of such occupation!
Sitting under the mango tree with what feels like half the village sitting or standing around us, I start a line of enquiry probing these issues of cross-border conflict and environmental degradation. The villagers say they hear gunshots every day, not sure why but they fear. They're pretty sure it's coming from the FARDC camp because whenever the soldiers aren't there, things are quiet. It's possible the soldiers are hunting bushmeat; some of the villagers claim to have seen soldiers killing animals when they have crossed to the other side. That bushmeat is taken home or sold in the communities. As a few of the men point this out, Wilson turns to one of them and says in a language I don't understand, "I've seen you kill animals in the forest as well." George chuckles, takes note, and the man is silent.
The Ugandans have family and farms on both sides of the river, so they come and go, especially because land is scarce on their side. The Congolese side is much less populated and really the peoples are of the same tribe. Sometimes when the river floods though, the villagers are unable to cross to their gardens and if the waters are high for long enough, they face food insecurity as well. These days though, the water volume has decreased and they're not sure why. I decide to go with that thought and in the meantime, end up teaching George a little about participatory research and the Socratic method.
Q: Why is there less water?
A1: There are more taps taking the water away.
A2: There is more sunshine so the water's drying. There have been changes in weather and climate.
Q: Why has the weather and climate changed?
A1: We don't know.
Q: Anyone else?
A2: There used to be certain things that conserved the environment and now man is destroying those things. Like tree cutting, which is causing less water. Or industrial machines (referring to the Hima cement factory nearby), which produce gases and gases are affecting the climate. This never used to exist in the past.
Q: What can be done?
A: We need to go to the communities and educate them to stop destroying the environment.
A2: We haven't planned to plant more trees. We could get seedlings (whereupon he proceeds to ask George for seedlings from UWA, George agrees to put forward their request and to see what he can do)
I come away from that meeting buzzing. The community as a collective had identified the causes, effects and impacts of climate change, plus some mitigatory and adaptive measures that they could engage in collaboratively with the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA)!
In the car ride back to the park headquarters, George and I discussed this, both of us excited by what had transpired. George noted that I had an interesting way of asking questions and I replied that this was the result of my legal training in the U.S. based on what we call the Socratic Method. We answer questions by asking questions which will probe the inquirer to think and to come to the answers on their own. I suggested that this is an effective way of facilitating so-called collaborative conservation and used the example of the man who had linked industrialization, environmental degradation and climate change to illustrate.
In traditional UWA style, George would have come into that village, sat under the mango tree and lectured off to the villagers. He would tell them what to do, instead of asking them what they could do, while making additional or corrective suggestions accordingly. I emphasized that it's not that "the community" doesn't know these things already; that information is sitting in the minds of at least a few of them. They just need to be probed and shared. I had to ask a few times before one of the men came forth with his explanation on climate change. Not to mention, none of the women will speak at all unless you start calling on them and forcing a response. Plus, when the views and recommendations come from the members of the community themselves, it looks a lot less like an externally imposed mandate. But, when an outsider asks for the voices of women, people may see that it matters. George sat on this for a bit, eager to try it out. I made a mental note to donate my book on Participatory Research to UWA.
Bundibujyo and the Barracks
Down a bumpy dirt road that takes you to the border of the DRC and Uganda lives a place where people, all those naturally existing things that we call "the environment", and conflict collide. I was with George (the Community Conservation Warden) and Wilson (a Law Enforcement Ranger) again, this time I was driving...to which George politely commented on his own surprise that I am "actually a good driver." But, I guess you should see the children in some of these villages when they see me pass through - "There's a Mzungu! The Mzungu's a woman! And she's driving!!" I guess any one of those three things would be incredibly rare on their own, but to see it all in one event must be the talk of the town for days.
So George and Wilson and I are cruising down this bumpy road on the southern side of Semuliki National Park. This time everything's green and covered in peoples' gardens, but for some time the road follows the boundary of the park to our right. I see piles of wood stacked up along the road just outside of the park and wonder where the timber's coming from. Some of the country's last remaining old-growth mahogany dwells in those forests. The villagers wouldn't cut mahogany for firewood (it would be crazy to burn through money like that), but there are definitely more than a few people eying those trees for the stacks of currency that they're worth.
What the road leads us to is a little border town, Butogo. Wilson slips into the village and starts to put the word out - meeting under the mango tree, a researcher's in town. Giving the word time to spread, George and I make for the border...the River Semuliki. It's mid-afternoon on a Tuesday and people big and small are in the river bathing, cleaning, swimming, playing. The West Bank is the DRC, the East Bank is Uganda.
I touch the water and eye the other side. George tells me how here, the River Semuliki is also changing its flow from time to time, cutting deeper into some banks, letting others go. Crops are lost to its waters, sometimes surfacing in international lands. Again, the ritual of goat gifting to the neighboring chief is necessary to regain access to lands and harvests.
The problems in this village are greater than just riparian erosion though. Just over the river sits a series of grass thatched huts. Staring at it from the top of a small hill on the Ugandan side, is another set of huts. Uniform like a housing development in a U.S. suburb. The Congolese huts belong not to the villagers, but to the FARDC. Similarly, the Ugandan huts were built for the UPDF. Military barracks staring each other down across a lackadaisical serpentine river filled with splashing children in their underoos.
This part of Uganda was ADF territory not so many years ago. The Ugandan government quashed most of that through oppressive violence, pushing the ADF combatants into the DRC (a.k.a. the Watalinga sector of Virunga National Park, home of the okapi). Through a series of historical events that I know little about, the ADF somehow became the ADF-Nalu and there they are terrorizing the northern sector of Virunga NP. That's why the UPDF barrack had been established in Butogo, but they tell me that it's now been abandoned.
Never you fear though, the soldiers are not far away. An intelligence officer gave me a rough sketch of just how many barracks are situated up and down this DRC-Uganda border, each one stacked with some 700 odd soldiers. I wonder in my head if population density counts in this region account for the massive military population stationed here as well. Think about the resource pressures of such occupation!
Sitting under the mango tree with what feels like half the village sitting or standing around us, I start a line of enquiry probing these issues of cross-border conflict and environmental degradation. The villagers say they hear gunshots every day, not sure why but they fear. They're pretty sure it's coming from the FARDC camp because whenever the soldiers aren't there, things are quiet. It's possible the soldiers are hunting bushmeat; some of the villagers claim to have seen soldiers killing animals when they have crossed to the other side. That bushmeat is taken home or sold in the communities. As a few of the men point this out, Wilson turns to one of them and says in a language I don't understand, "I've seen you kill animals in the forest as well." George chuckles, takes note, and the man is silent.
The Ugandans have family and farms on both sides of the river, so they come and go, especially because land is scarce on their side. The Congolese side is much less populated and really the peoples are of the same tribe. Sometimes when the river floods though, the villagers are unable to cross to their gardens and if the waters are high for long enough, they face food insecurity as well. These days though, the water volume has decreased and they're not sure why. I decide to go with that thought and in the meantime, end up teaching George a little about participatory research and the Socratic method.
Q: Why is there less water?
A1: There are more taps taking the water away.
A2: There is more sunshine so the water's drying. There have been changes in weather and climate.
Q: Why has the weather and climate changed?
A1: We don't know.
Q: Anyone else?
A2: There used to be certain things that conserved the environment and now man is destroying those things. Like tree cutting, which is causing less water. Or industrial machines (referring to the Hima cement factory nearby), which produce gases and gases are affecting the climate. This never used to exist in the past.
Q: What can be done?
A: We need to go to the communities and educate them to stop destroying the environment.
A2: We haven't planned to plant more trees. We could get seedlings (whereupon he proceeds to ask George for seedlings from UWA, George agrees to put forward their request and to see what he can do)
I come away from that meeting buzzing. The community as a collective had identified the causes, effects and impacts of climate change, plus some mitigatory and adaptive measures that they could engage in collaboratively with the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA)!
In the car ride back to the park headquarters, George and I discussed this, both of us excited by what had transpired. George noted that I had an interesting way of asking questions and I replied that this was the result of my legal training in the U.S. based on what we call the Socratic Method. We answer questions by asking questions which will probe the inquirer to think and to come to the answers on their own. I suggested that this is an effective way of facilitating so-called collaborative conservation and used the example of the man who had linked industrialization, environmental degradation and climate change to illustrate.
In traditional UWA style, George would have come into that village, sat under the mango tree and lectured off to the villagers. He would tell them what to do, instead of asking them what they could do, while making additional or corrective suggestions accordingly. I emphasized that it's not that "the community" doesn't know these things already; that information is sitting in the minds of at least a few of them. They just need to be probed and shared. I had to ask a few times before one of the men came forth with his explanation on climate change. Not to mention, none of the women will speak at all unless you start calling on them and forcing a response. Plus, when the views and recommendations come from the members of the community themselves, it looks a lot less like an externally imposed mandate. But, when an outsider asks for the voices of women, people may see that it matters. George sat on this for a bit, eager to try it out. I made a mental note to donate my book on Participatory Research to UWA.
