Tainted Unions: Conflict minerals and life partnership

Rangers are still getting attacked in the Virungas.  This is the last correspondence I received:

"I know the man in Virunga will not have much time and interest. They are fully busy, there was another rebel attack yesterday and a ranger killed, another seriously injured." (Feb. 1st, 2011)

A week ago it was Dara's birthday.  We've hung out twice now; appropriately, once on my birthday and once on her birthday.  For Dara's birthday we went to dinner at David and Alexis' apartment here in Kampala.  The two are engaged and working on compiling a ring - bits and pieces of places they want to go.  One of the things that they mentioned was some rare mineral from the DRC.  This peaked my interest, so I asked them what the name of the mineral is.  They couldn't remember, something they use in computers or something like that.

You mean....coltan?!

Of course, I couldn't let this go.  Here I am getting news about rangers and people dying, women getting raped and civilians displaced by the millions in the Virungas and this nice couple wants to set off their marriage with a Blood Diamond style Conflict Mineral....can't be.

This couple, so happily in love, works for UNICEF and have lived in different parts of Africa for a handful or so years; they must at least in part think that they're out here doing some good in one way or another.  I couldn't let them be another part of the problem.  Another willfully ignorant consumer, party to a reprehensible violent conflict.

I say willfully because most of us who have grown up in North Atlantic countries and their Pan-Oceanic analogs (i.e., Japan, Australia, New Zealand, etc.) are relatively highly educated with an incredible amount of access to information....and yet, we live these insular ignorant lives, we are the force that is so much greater than all of those who want to break endless poverty cycles, live in a "world" free of wars (and I use the term "world" in the completely subjective sense that we each inhabit completely different worlds, despite overlaps here and there....let me show you my world), walk for water and firewood without getting raped, over and over and over....when is it ever over?

That's one thing that I think we all have a say in.  Forget that the conflict is seemingly so far away....Afghanistan, DRC, Tunisia, Cambodia, Egypt, Cote d'Ivoire, Israel, Palestine, Mexico, the list goes on.  Globalization says it's not.  We are all by mere participation in global consumption, markets and trading, a close and intimate ally to extreme violence, human rights abuses, arms trades, trafficking (of humans and natural resources), not to mention...ecocide.

In the U.S., we've been dumbed down to think that democracy means voting, maybe once a year, punch a hole in a card and you've fulfilled your civic duty, pat yourself on the back and call yourself a good citizen, Patriot even.  But, now they say there are other ways to vote.  Three times a day with the food you eat (where's it come from, how's it made, who's your farmer?), every time you make a commercial transaction, every second your money sits in a bank and they're off investing it in massive hydroelectric projects, massive logging concessions, oil drilling in some eco-fragile region with disenfranchised populations, you get the point.

So as rangers die and happy couples plan their lives together, all I can do is hope that somehow connections are being made and we're using all that privilege, education and access for something....preferably something good.

Arm yourself with information, demand peace and dignity for all life on Earth.

Some resources on Coltan and Conflict in the DRC dredged up from the first page of a simple google search (a.k.a. you can probably find better stuff than this if you care to):

- Guns, Money and Cell Phones: http://www.globalissues.org/article/442/guns-money-and-cell-phones
- Coltan and Conflict in the DRC: http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/RMOI-7P73BC?OpenDocument
- Conflict Mining 101: Coltan, the Congo Act and How You Can Help: http://planetgreen.discovery.com/work-connect/conflict-minerals-congo-act.html

- Coltan Mining in the DRC: http://www.gesi.org/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=PoQTN7xPn4c%3D&tabid=60
- Coltan Exploitation in the Eastern DRC: http://www.iss.co.za/pubs/Books/Scarcity+Surfeit/Chapter4.pdf

Peace Parks Under Threat

Parks for peace....riddled with violence?  What's going on?

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10701982

Just the other day, I posted news on the death of 3 rangers and 5 soldiers in Virungas NP, part of the Central Albertine Rift TFPA Network.  Today, it's football players getting gunned down in a small peace park in Juarez.

One of the things about peace parks is that it's still an evolving term.  Some people equate peace parks to transboundary protected areas.  This is, at least in part, based on the assumption that collaborative conservation across borders inevitably nurtures peace.  It's is one of the key theoretical underpinnings of environmental peacebuilding, one of the main arguments for peace parks, so I believe that they're right, there is peace-building inherently occurring in transboundary collaboration, but what's wrong with being explicit about peace?  About demanding it outright, conservation AND peace.  Maybe, that's what we need, to just state it loud and clear and to accept no less.

The Central Albertine Rift TFPA Network is a transboundary protected area, but not officially recognized as a peace park.  When I asked whether or not there was any movement in the direction of declaring it as such, the answer that I got is "no."  It seems park people are afraid to ask for too much.  Proponents of transboundary conservation in the Central Albertine Rift are currently working on a trilateral agreement between the three governments to formally recognize their efforts and to allow for more cooperative arrangements (park authorities are now limited in their joint activities because of legal constraints).  If they can move the draft treaty forward and get governmental support for cross-border conservation activities to protect the wildlife, they're happy.  Asking for peace on top of that, would just complicate things. 

I've even been told that including a peace objective in the treaty may confuse the most important issue - biodiversity conservation.  Some have advised me that I shouldn't push the issue either, let my idealisms hinder practicalisms.  But, I can't help but ask.....when insecurity in the DRC, for example, is leading to the deaths of over 160 rangers (not to mention civilians, combatants, etc.), a horrifying amount of illegal poaching, logging, natural resources and arms trafficking, etc.....how is conflict not directly related to biodiversity protection?  Is positive peace not a critical factor to effective conservation?  Don't we need peace?

I could be wrong, but I think that people are afraid to demand peace.  It's like talking about peace is for "hippies" only or something.

A Photographic Review

These aren't actually my photos, but since all of my photos are sitting mysteriously locked up in small film canisters in a dark corner of my bookshelf waiting to be developed still, I thought I'd post these for those who are in need of visual stimulation beyond the babble of my words.  Photo cred go to Lillian, Patrick or whoever was holding the camera at the time.

Some photos of the living room in its earlier more bare walled days:

 Birthday dinner: gotta grub like you're celebrating

 New friends and old friends: housewarming and my 29th

 UPeace Alumni Reunion: George, my old neighbor from Ciudad Colon and I meet again

 It's not a UPeace party without some dancing

 Patrick and his field assistant (whose name sounds an awful lot like God)

Patrick was worried, but with a bamboo stick and some wellies, the hike was amazing

 Shaima and I visiting Lillian at the hospital during some of my first days in Uganda

 My Comorian colleague at the "Greening of Water Law in Africa" conference

Conservation Martyrs

Sorry to be Debbie Downer, but I can't let this information go without sharing:

VIRUNGA NATIONAL PARK
INSTITUT CONGOLAIS POUR LA CONSERVATION DE LA NATURE
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

24th January 2011

For more information go to www.gorilla.cd/blog

Attack on Ranger Patrol in Congo’s Virunga National Park leaves 8 dead and 3 critically injured

Three rangers and five Congolese soldiers have been killed during a violent attack on their patrol vehicle in Congo's Virunga National Park. A rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) hit the early morning patrol when it fell into an ambush approximately one kilometer north of Mabenga, just inside the park border. The rangers were being deployed along a road that passes through the national park in an attempt to secure a safe passage for the public.  The attackers, who escaped on foot, are believed to be FDLR Rwandan militia, an illegal movement believed to include the perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide in 1994.  The attack is thought to have been carried out in retaliation for the destruction of two of their camps by park rangers in December 2010.

The attack took place about 100 km north of the city of Goma. This is the worst attack on Virunga Park patrols in over a year.  Park rangers and regular army units have been working together to secure the area within the national park known to be heavily frequented by FDLR militia.

"We are deeply saddened by the loss of our colleagues who were killed in their efforts to protect the public from illegal armed groups" said Virunga Park Director Emmanuel de Merode. "130 of Virunga's rangers have died since the beginning of the war in 1996, but the park's staff remains determined to protect the park"

The rangers will be burried tomorrow morning at the park cemetary on the banks of the Rutshuru River.  The injured are in a critical state and have been moved to Rutshuru hospital.  

Some 400 Park Rangers protect Virunga National Park in eastern DRC, a region affected by a 12-year civil war and political instability. The Park is home to mountain gorillas, lowland gorillas, chimpanzees, forest elephants and rhinos, among other wildlife. The Rangers have remained active in protecting these parks, four of which have been classified as World Heritage Sites by UNESCO. Poaching, wildlife trafficking and habitat destruction remain the key threats to the survival of the wildlife in the park.

Editor’s Notes:

The Congolese Wildlife Authority (ICCN) and its Rangers work throughout the country to protect the National Parks of Congo and their wildlife from poachers, rebel groups, illegal miners and land invasions. Over 160 Rangers have been killed in the last 10 years protecting the 5 parks of eastern DRC, and Rangers worked throughout the civil war, rarely receiving a salary.

Virunga National Park, Africa’s oldest national park (established in 1925) and a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979, is home to 200 of the world’s mountain gorillas and a small population of eastern lowland gorillas. Formerly known as Albert National Park, Virunga lies in eastern DR Congo and covers 7,800 square kilometers. The park is managed by the Congolese Institute for the Conservation of Nature, the Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature (ICCN).

For additional information and/or photographs please contact:

Emmanuel de Merode, Director of Virunga National Park:
edemerode@gorilla.cd or +243 99 344 8133

Joel Wengamulay, Communications Director, Virunga National Park:
joel@gorilla.cd or +243 99 773 3521

---

I can't help but highlight at this time that this puts the body count of rangers alone at over 160 in the Eastern DRC.  This obviously says nothing of civilians, combatants, or even tourists.  It also says nothing about the pandemic rape, torture, environmental devastation and oppression.

The tragic thing about so much of the violence in the Eastern DRC is that it's being driven by forces far beyond their borders and by everyday people who care so little or not at all.  It's the hideous nature of globalization and our excessive demand for cheap natural resources; the lack of control that we have over our governments and the careless way that we condone their use of violence and proliferation of arms and mechanisms of death, pain and suffering.

Maybe it's difficult to hear, but we all have a role in these deaths and violence.  That means though that we also have a choice in what that role might be.  As they say, are you part of the problem or are you part of the solution?

New Kid on the Block

Liz says I remind her of "Contentment" as described by Ruth Gendler.  I'm not sure what that means, but this is what I've managed to dig up online:

"Contentment has learned how to find out what she needs to know. Last year she went on a major housecleaning spree. First she stood on her head until all the extra facts fell out. Then she discarded about half her house. Now she knows where every thing comes from—who dyed the yarn dark green and who wove the rug and who built the loom, who made the willow chair, who planted the apricot trees. She made the turquoise mugs herself with clay she found in the hills beyond her house.

When Contentment is sad, she takes a mud bath or goes to the mountains until her lungs are clear. When she walks through an unfamiliar neighborhood, she always makes friends with the local cats."
— J. Ruth Gendler (The Book of Qualities) 

Liz is the new Fulbrighter from Omaha, Nebraska.  We were roommates at orientation something like half a year ago.  Now she's moved out to Uganda to start her 10-month research project on sanitary pads.  Sanitary pads in terms of girls and education, health and sanitation, waste production and management...all interesting stuff.  I would write more on it, but I think that's her task here for the next months.  So, when she publishes something wonderful, I'll forward it on.  Basically, Liz is a journalist/writer by training, but most likely by nature, I'm sure. 

Liz has moved into the building adjacent to mine; we're in nearly identical apartments.  I'm A-2, she's B-2.  The layout is exactly the same, except that my flat has a serious amount of very blue carpeting, while hers is that dark red painted over concrete/cement that so many of these homes in developing countries are floored with.  Strangely, her place is almost nearly empty of everything except for its not so attractive large furniture.  We think most of it is actually shipped over from the U.S.  Something about the stickers on a lot of the furniture that say something about the U.S. Information Agency might be what's giving it away.

Crazy for such furniture to come from so far when equally unattractive and probably much cheaper furniture is also available here.  I highly doubt that that esteemed U.S. agency of ours can tell me that they shipped it all the way here because it's special sustainably harvested woods, not acquirable here in such close proximity to so much of the world's illegal timber activities.

Speaking of illegal activities, I'm learning a few interesting things.  Just this weekend, we made a quick stop at the Aviation Club in Kampala.  Apparently it's one of only two places (the other being Entebbe Int'l Airport) in this country where you can get aviation fuel and it's also the only place to get one of those small planes that zip around the region and land on those grassy air strips that are everywhere. 

Rumor is, those little planes are also what's trafficking a lot of the illegally extracted natural resources out of the DRC.  In the parks where I work along the border with DRC, you can see these small planes flying in and out all the time.  I highly doubt they're carrying tourists.  But, my question is.....if those planes are trafficking illegal resources and one place they must fly in and out of or refuel at is here in Uganda at the Aviation Club....why is it so hard to stop these guys?  I mean, I think I know the answer to my own question (corruption runs deep and powerful), but that doesn't make the answer any more acceptable.

I'm brought back to the question underlying so much of my master's thesis.  What do individuals and communities do when their governments aren't fulfilling their end of the social contract?  If the governments do not take proactive steps to protect natural resources and landscapes, or at the very least to prevent harmful activities?  Or even worse, if the governments themselves are the ones who are engaging in the harmful or even illicit acts?  It's not the first time I've come across such blatant corruption.  The villagers and park rangers in many parts of Central America that I have worked in have told me similar stories of government abuse.  But again, the question is, what do we do?  What can we do?

One of these days, I'm going to sit down and write a long letter

MIA for a month, but justifiably so.  Have been in the bush, in the forests, climbing mountains, getting soaked by the rain, interviewing people, sharing ideas, promoting peace parks, visiting gloriously beautiful places with little or no internet and only sitting down in front of the computer when it's absolutely necessary. 

Basically, I turned 29, threw a little housewarming/birthday party at my flat in Kampala, had a few local visitors and my first international visitor, then took off with my supervisor (Emmanuel) and his family for the village, Bushamba.  We had a minibus packed with people, laughter and stories that went caroling down the bumpy dirt roads, stopping to pick up fresh vegetables, tiny eggs that are shockingly yellow when cooked, fruit and what along the side of the road.  We reached Bushamba by night and there was a small group to greet us, Emmanuel's brother and his family, and all the people who work for them. 

For the next handful or so days, Ale (my Italian visitor friend) and I would sleep in late, eat ridiculous amounts of food, play with the kids, hang out with the adults and take small excursions to nearby places - the top of the hill where the water tank is, the magical lake that flooded out a serpentine valley one day (there's a great story behind it that maybe I'll tell in another post someday), the local trading centers, or just the outdoor courtyard to watch football (aka soccer) matches between U.K. teams projected on to a wall of the house in the dark of the night.  Ale had brought delicious cakes and sweets from Italy, which we spread out over the days and shared with all.  There were also a good handful of birthdays and tasty cakes across a spattering of days and sadly, one death in the family.  I've never met him before, but Rogers' father had been ill for some time.  He missed Rogers and Sandra's wedding to pass away the morning after Christmas.  As it goes, that's the circle of life and as Rogers said, now he's in heaven.

For the first time possibly ever, I went to church on Christmas day.  In this super religious country, I am considered the worst of all things, a pagan they say.  Nevertheless, on Christmas day, I put on the best clothes I'd brought (jeans and a t-shirt) and went with the family to church.  Everyone was packed into wooden benches on 3 sides of the small building and Emmanuel's father sat at the front by the cross.  Once an active community priest, he had relatively few words for the congregation that day.  Other, younger members, have taken over most of his duties.  Singing, drumbeating, dancing and prayers later....the fun part began...the auction.  Villagers had come to church carrying all kinds of joys from their gardens, tall sugarcanes, spiky pineapples, baskets of eggs, beans, potatoes, avocados, and so on.  These were piled at the front and auctioned, one by one.  Emmanuel's family ended up buying nearly everything, then sallied out just as indiscretely as they had entered.  They were blessed and God was thanked for bringing the bazungus (white people) to church, a.k.a. Ale and me.

Just a couple days before the new year, Aunt Betty (Emmanuel's sister) offered us transport for 6 days of travel through the parks.  It's really difficult reaching some of these parks or moving around inside them, so this was amazingly helpful.  We took off immediately for Mgahinga Gorilla NP at the very southwest corner of Uganda.  From there, you can see Rwanda and the DRC.  Three national parks meeting at one stupendous volcano, it's the kind of stuff that makes me giddy.  Ale went mountain gorilla trekking while I met with the wardens, then the next day he went golden monkey trekking while I spoke with a local NGO. 

New Year's Eve, UWA threw a party and we were invited...at one point, even introduced to the community.  After a healthy plate of food and seemingly endless speeches, Ale asked me what time I thought it was.  I said....9pm, 930?  His expression indicated that I couldn't be more wrong.  So I said, what?  10pm?  He said, no....it's 8, 8:10 to be exact.  I stared back at him and said oh no....if I'm going to make it past midnight, I think we should leave and come back.  It was way too early and the party really hadn't gotten started yet.  So, we took off, back to the community camp and hung out a bit with the people there, packed up our stuff for the next day's travel, and eventually at around 11:40pm, headed back to the party just across the road. 

It didn't take long for me to realize that I was one of only three females, the rest of the party was all men, some UWA staff, even a soldier here and there, but mostly loads of really drunken local villagers.  Thankfully, Izza was the diplomatic bouncer of the night, dancing up to any possibly threatening guy (especially those too drunk to keep themselves from falling all over everyone around them) and casually dancing them away.  Turns out, biggest danger was actually one of the other women!  Short, tiny little lady with shiny eyes and a drunken smile, had a baby strapped to her back...seemed harmless enough at first (I mean, the baby was still sleeping right?), but then she started to dance with me.  Really close.  Really wrong.  I won't say more, not here.

The next morning we said goodbye to the villagers and UWA and found ourselves with a new driver.  The guy who had taken us from Bushamba to Mgahinga and who was supposed to be with us for those 6 days, was at a party, so he sent another guy to drop us at Nkuringo on the southern side of Bwindi Impenetrable NP.  The plan was to get dropped in Nkuringo, hike through the forest to Buhoma and then get picked up to go to Mweya in Queen Elizabeth NP for the night.  Since we had a new driver now who was only supposed to drop us in Nkuringo and another driver was picking us up in Buhoma, Ale and I were forced to repack our backpacks and to hike through the rainforest with all our stuff.  It was a beautiful walk, but between the packs and the pouring rain, all I could think about was making it to Buhoma.  We were hours behind schedule and hadn't had anything to eat since early morning.  In Buhoma, we devoured a plate of food in our soggy clothes, hopped in a van with a new driver and took off for the bush.

We pulled into Queen in the dark of the night, had to let ourselves into the park gate because no one was there anymore, and then slept in the wrong house.  Basically, I've only been to Lu's house and I understood that all these researchers stay at his place (I also had to present my papers last time when I stayed there), so when I called UWA to reserve space in the Researcher's House, I assumed it was his.  Wrong.  When I went to Lu's house, two of the doors (his and Joe's) were locked and the other one was occupied by Jennifer (with the ringed mongoose project).  Agnes told me that she'd left the door to my room unlocked for me, so I was perplexed to find myself shut out.  Then she told me to ask for Winston...but there was no Winston in the house.  Strange.  It was too late to sort things out, so that night, we slept out in the living room.  Which is where I slept last time anyway.  The next morning, James walks in and tells me that the Researcher's House is two houses down.  Woops.

Finally in the right place, I discovered the door to the room unlocked and realized that I'd met Winston before at the UWA HQ in Kampala.  Ale and I hung our things up to dry and put the shoes out in the sun.  I childishly played around a bit with one of Joe's camera traps, so he now has a few photos of me sitting on the dry grass behind Lu's house, but he won't know that until he returns to his cameras a week from now. 

Queen Elizabeth is kind of an expensive place if you're just a tourist and don't have your own transport, so we didn't spend long there.  I had my meetings at the park HQ and then we cut out and made our way to Rwenzori Mtns. NP.  The park warden is really friendly and talkative guy, such a character, and he seemed pleased to have a researcher.  Apparently there aren't many, I'm the only one in the last couple months I think.  So, he set us up at the community camp at the base of the Central Circuit, which takes you up to the glacial peaks of Speke, Stanley and Margherita (the all-famous).  The next days were filled with interviews with rangers and some of the local organizations, plus a sweet day of hiking up to Camp 1 and Lake Mahoma, where they used to mine minerals and siphon off lake water until they realized that if they just kept pumping water out along with all mine tailings, the lake was going to dry up. 

We hung out by the lake and watched thick clouds cover and uncover layers of peaks and mountains before deciding that it was best to start heading down, clouds didn't look so good.  Not long after we started making our way through the steep slopes of the bamboo forest it started to pour rain.  It was like Bwindi all over again, but this time the path was steep so we spent lots of time sliding down muddy slopes and tearing up our knees. 

On the way, we passed trails of porters carrying heavy looking bags of gear with a strap across their forehead.  I was only slightly miffed to find that there was only one European looking tourist at Camp 1....all those men for him?  Thing is, each porter probably gets paid about 6,000-8,000UGX ($3-4) a day, so if you've got some money, you can hire an army.  None of these porters are well-equipped for the Rwenzoris.  They have thin shirts and pants, maybe a pair of wellies.  We're talking about an 8-day trek up to 5,109m and across snow and glaciers.  I don't know how they do it, especially for so little pay.

Porters, guides and campsites on the Central Circuit are the exclusive concessions of Rwenzori Mountaineering Services.  Allegedly a community-based organization that's set up to provide jobs for the local poor and to protect their precious mountain environments, it has a horrible reputation for tricky bookkeeping, poor environmental practices, untrained guides and drunken porters (no joke, I was witness).  It's no surprise the management looks like they're making bank and everyone else looks like they're no better off than they were before.  Unfortunately, their concession from UWA has decades of monopoly to go.

The Rwenzoris themselves are amazing though; I dreamt about buying land there and putting up my own little yurt or cabina.  They say those mountains are sacred, I believe it. 

From the Rwenzoris we went to Kibale NP.  Kibale is further east and not so close to the border with DRC, so it was a bit strange to be talking about transboundary conservation when there is no boundary and little to no interaction with the Congo.  I think what happened is Kibale NP is the headquarters for the entire Kibale Conservation Area, which includes Semuliki NP and some of the other protected areas along the border with Congo.  In Rwenzori Mtns NP and Semuliki NP, all of the rangers and locals can tell you about the ADF conflicts that led to thousands of deaths and park closures not so long ago, not to mention all of the Congolese refugees that have settled this side of the border who are now exerting additional pressure on park resources.  But in Kibale, it's all about primates and rocket stoves.  Eyes glaze over when I talk about the transboundary network and collaborative conservation across borders.

In Semuliki, the dialogue appropriately returned to transboundary conservation, however, and it was really interesting.  Military presence around Semuliki is heavy, mud and wattle army barracks are here and there and they work closely with UWA to share security information, sometimes also to herd encroaching cattle out of the nearby Toro-Semliki Wildlife Reserve, where my friend Paul is the law enforcement warden and fighting a constant battle against cattle grazing in the park.  The ICCN (park authorities in DRC) has fled the northern sector of Virungas NP to Goma as insecurity reigns and UWA is left to fight all the cross-border trafficking (lots of timber) and poaching on their own.  For the last half year or so, transboundary collaboration this side of the PA network has fallen apart.  As the Rio Declaration says, "Peace, development and environmental protection are interdependent and indivisible" and "Warfare is inherently destructive of sustainable development."

This is what peace parks are all about.

Yesterday, I left Semuliki and returned to Kampala.  Got off the bus as it hit traffic in Kampala near Mango Hospital and got on a boda boda.  Bad idea.  Yesterday, I had my first motorcycle accident.  The boda boda rider ran into another boda parked in front towards the side of the road and we all went spilling to the gnarly ripped up asphalt below.  I went down on the left with my backpack and all, tearing up my left hand and knee.  It's like someone took a cheese grater to my skin.  But thankfully, we weren't going so fast, so the impact wasn't crippling.  I got up a little stunned and looked at the boda man like he was crazy.  He looked at me to get back on so we could proceed.  Not really knowing what else to do, I did, but only after sternly advising that he ride really carefully because that totally wasn't cool.  In front of Makerere, I got off and said, sorry but I'm not going to pay for that.  He said, how about just 1,000UGX?  Again, I looked at him like he was crazy and said, for what?  For dropping me?  And walked away.

As I fell, all I could think is that I couldn't believe this was happening.  For the last three days, Paul has been teaching me how to ride a motorcycle in an open football field of a local primary school.  I've been managing to ride around in circles, dodging kids and soccer balls, in and out of first and second gear, even third gear when we were on the open dirt road, and I'd just spent last night telling Paul how I'm afraid to get into some crazy accident, get knocked by a huge truck blasting through one of these dirt highways that cuts through so many of the national parks, or fall on one of these windy mountain roads filled with ditches and rocks.  These aren't exactly easy roads or terrain for an absolute beginner and I've definitely got a serious fear/respect for these machines, but, all I can say is that it would be so much easier to get around these parks if I had a motorcycle.  And now, I've had my first accident....hopefully last.

It's definitely time to get that helmet.

A Recount of the Last Couple Plus Weeks

Thursday morning, Dec. 2nd, I jumped on a boda boda with my backpacks and attempted to balance all of the weight so that I wouldn't tip too far back when the boda accelerated or too far to any one side when we turned.  Reminded of Jim's words just before I left the Conservation International office in San Jose, Costa Rica one day some 3.5 years ago - Don't let yourself become another statistic - I told the driver to ride safely.  I had a keen interest in reaching my destination and not just becoming another one of those 50 lives sacrificed to the boda gods every day here in Uganda.

I was destined for the UWA office and a green pick-up truck maneuvered by Geoffrey, originally from the far east now married to a girl from the far west and settled in her village.  Geoffrey took us across kilometers of tarmacked, poorly tarmacked and untarmacked roads between Kampala and Bwindi-Buhoma.  We would spend hours in Kampala before even hitting the Northern Bypass.  First there were road tests for the funny sound the car had been making, then we had to pick up his wife and son, and finally to the Park chief's house to pick up a blanket (no offense, but that was kind of ridiculous....he made us drive an extra hour or so through traffic to pick up a blanket for him at his house to take to Bwindi with us when he could oh so easily throw that in his vehicle when he goes to Bwindi himself).

There were stops along the road for roasted cassava, cold bottles of water, and market days (which you can spot from a distance as a colorful conglomeration of peoples along the side of a road with foods, wares and old clothes piled between them).  Geoffrey knows all the shortcuts through town that avoid traffic and can move the vehicle across any terrain no matter how potholed or torn up by rains, but ultimately darkness wins all.  After almost taking out a grown man walking along the side of the road in opaque darkness with the car's side-view mirror, we stopped in Fort Portal for the night.

We parked along the main drag and asked for lodging, went to the first place we were told and took the first two rooms they showed us.  We sat down at the motel restaurant to order food, but it turned out there was nothing I could eat.  On the entire menu that was listed on the wall, there were really only two items to choose from - fish or cow.  I chose to leave.  Geoffrey and I walked around the town through three restaurants before we found one that offered rice and beans with no meat in it.  Rice and beans have gotten me through Latin America, I suppose they'll do here in Africa as well.  Geoffrey ended up eating kalo, a mixture of ground millet and cassava with water and steamed to form a sticky thick paste that you pinch with your fingers and dip into sauces.  It's too bad the sauce had lamb in it because I really wanted to try the kalo.  Foods you eat with your fingers are endlessly fun.

The next morning we rose with the sun and hit the road sans breakfast, stopping in Kasese for tea.  The waitress asked us if we wanted chapati with our tea and we all said yes.  Less than a few minutes later she would return to tell us that there was no chapati.  Food industry in this country is such a tease.  They're constantly supplying you with menus of dishes and things that they don't have.  Oftentimes I don't even ask to see the menu, I just ask what they have that day.  Then I sift out the vegetarian options and choose.  Usually this means either beans or gnut sauce.

What followed Kasese would blow my mind.  We were driving through Queen Elizabeth National Park (QENP) and so close to the Congolese border.  You could see trucks and taxis loaded up with people and things crossing back and forth across the border busting down this road that slices straight through QE.  Meanwhile, all around you is wildlife en vivo.  Elephants, water buffalo, cobs, baboons, bush buck, rabbits, warthogs and hippos.  I was exuberant at the sight of every one.  This was the first time I'd seen such animals in the wild (minus rabbits I guess).  I deliriously texted Joe my excitement since I knew that he was somewhere in QE at that very moment too.  Was he seeing what I was seeing?!?  I was so glad I'd left Kampala and was finally here where the wild things roam.

After QE, we weren't far.  A long stretch of bad dirt road later we finally reached Buhoma.  I wasn't going to be making it to Ruhija where the Institute of Tropical Forest Conservation (ITFC) is and where I had originally planned to go.  But it was okay, a free ride is a free ride.  I was dropped at the ranger station, registered with the park people and met the man in charge - John Justice.  JJ as I'm going to call him for now is the Community Conservation Warden, but since the Conservation Area Manager (presumably the man with the blanket) is on leave, he's in charge.  I sat in front of him for some minutes, awkwardly aware of all the dust and sweat that had coated my skin over the last two days on the road, as he read through the letters that I'd so bureaucratically collected in Kampala until he looked up at me and said, "So you're doing research?"  I nodded.

After explaining who I am, what I'm doing and what I plan to do in the next days and year, we set up an appointment to do an interview the next morning and I was deposited in the care of Alison, a ranger from their Rushamba outpost now on leave and hanging around Buhoma, his home village.  I had been hooked up with a banda at Bwindi View Rest Camp for the next few days until Monday morning when I could catch a ride to ITFC in Ruhija with JJ.

Alison would be my guide for the rest of the day, taking me around town, showing me the community hospital set up by some Californian (Dr. Scott they call him) and the trading centers where I could buy things, introducing me to the Local Council Chairman, who we did an interview with as the sun was setting over the green mountains, and the local primary school (where many of the children's school fees are paid for by international sponsors, tourists who had come through Buhoma to see the gorillas, saw the "children in need" and offered to cover some of their educational costs).  The whole town is filled with community development projects sponsored by outsiders, many of them ex-gorilla tourists with a bleeding heart.

I spent the next day interviewing JJ about park management and Bwindi Impenetrable National Park (BINP) in the context of the greater Central Albertine Rift Transfrontier Protected Area Network, community participation in park management, community development and community relations with the park.  Then later I met with the Communications Officer of the Bwindi Community Hospital, returning to my banda in the darkness, crossing many curious locals on the dirt road up.  I greeted them with the one word in rukiga that I had learned, "agandi," and listened to them respond "nige" as smiles of amusement spread across their faces at the discovery that the muzungu speaks in familiar tongue.

Sunday, I decided, would be a day of rest....which means, I was determined to hike into the forest.  I found Godfrey, the tourism warden, in his office and asked to do a hike.  You can't just walk into the forest here, you've got to go with a guide (aka armed rangers), someone who can protect you from whatever it is that you might come across....mountain gorilla, forest elephant, poacher, etc.  Usually they carry old Russian hand-me-downs, but I'm not so sure who they actually get them from.  Probably a whole mixture of countries from the so-called North or West, pick your cardinal direction, who've moved on to more advanced mechanisms of death and maiming.  Firearms: conserving for generations.

2pm, I met David and a couple from Switzerland? by the information kiosk and we set off with 2 other armed rangers into the forest and up the mountain toward a 3-tiered waterfall.  In other words, one water way with three falls and a nice little pool at the top.  It was nice to be hiking in the jungles again, shake off Kampala and to be reminded of all my days in the forests of Central America.  The beautiful thing about rainforests is that you don't actually have to walk anywhere to find yourself surrounded by such a diversity of life and species that sometimes I find myself in one spot for ages before I turn around to go home in the waning light.

This wasn't one of those days, I had to get back to Bwindi View.  I had promised Phenny (the owner) that I would help show him some things online, places where he might be able to advertise his rest camp and tourism services, and to try and connect him with the Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) coordinator so that he might be able to get a PCV to help him develop a sustainable ecotourism business here in Bwindi.  We went to the Gorilla Research Clinic owned by Conservation Through Public Health (CTPH), an organization started by wildlife veterinarians hoping to better protect the gorillas from zoonosis by improving the health of local communities.  One of the founders, Gladys Kalema, is a bit of a female veterinary celebrity.  I first heard about her through the WWF in Washington D.C. and then here and there from other organizations.  I had spoken to her earlier that day on the phone and CTPH just happened to be doing a couple workshops in the Bwindi area, so I was put in touch with one of their other founders so that we could meet up.

I missed Stephen in Buhoma, but caught up with him just in time to catch the tail end of a workshop on employee health and wildlife protection that Tuesday when I was in Ruhija.  JJ had dropped me at ITFC on Monday afternoon while on his way to Kasese for a regional meeting.  ITFC is a research center on the top of another gorgeous mountain on the edge of BINP.  Douglas and Miriam are the bossman and bosswoman; both seem like really nice and interesting people.  They met here in Uganda years ago, but have spent loads of time working in Indonesia and other parts of the world with forests and communities.  Douglas had supported my Fulbright application twice, so I was happy to finally meet him.

I also met a bunch of other researchers living at ITFC doing all kinds of different projects from Max Planck Institute mountain gorilla research to studies on sustainable takes of multiple use resources and field work on rodents as vectors of disease between wildlife and human communities.  I was put in the girl's room at the student dormitory, which I shared with Saada, and in the other rooms were Patrick (rodent study) and Joseph (multi-use research).  That first night I joined Emmanuel and Joseph at the local cantine, the restaurant at the Ruhija Community Rest Camp.  Apparently the cantine is where it's at.  It's a small community of researchers in Ruhija, so during the day everyone works and at night, we get together for dinner at someone's house or drinks at the cantine.  It's a good group of people and after 4 days mostly alone in a banda in Buhoma, I was happy for the company.

I would only have a handful of days in Ruhija before I moved on from there as well.  Basically, I caught the first ride out on Friday morning.  Douglas and Miriam were a bit shocked at the shortness of my stay, but I explained that this is just a preliminary trip to do some scoping and that I wanted to make it to Mgahinga Gorilla National Park (MGNP) and QENP before I return to Kampala with a friend on the 16th.  In other words, I had to make tracks if I was going to squeeze everything in.  The ITFC vehicle made the trip into Kabale on Friday morning, taking me and my bags with it.  I spent a few hours in Kabale meeting with people at International Gorilla Conservation Program (IGCP - an alliance of three NGOs, WWF, AWF and FFI, and sort of the Oz behind the whole transboundary PA network) and Bwindi-Mgahinga Conservation Trust (BMCT - the organization through which a lot of international money has been funneled into Bwindi-Mgahinga to avoid government graft) before squeezing myself into a saloon car to make the 2-hour trip between Kabale and Kisoro.

A saloon car is your regular old 4-door sedan but used as a means of supremely uncomfortable public transit.  Literally, there were 4 in the front of the car, 4 in the back plus bags and a baby, and the trunk door had to be tied down just to keep everything inside of it in.  The driver was half hanging out the window and half sitting in another man's lap.  Two were squeezed into the passenger seat and I was somewhere in the middle in the back, each of us with our bags on our laps...we're all strangers, but in this situation, the personal comfort zone is 0mm.  The last to get into the car was a woman with her baby, which she immediately passed off to the guy on my right despite the fact that he was a complete stranger.  For almost the entire ride, I thought it was his baby.  When they got out of the car at different places, her taking the baby with her and with little display of any kind of personal relationship, I realized that they were as new to each other as I was to them.  To my left was a Ugandan soldier stationed somewhere near Mt. Sabinyo (the volcano whose very pinnacle is what I like to call the African Crown of the Continent, meeting point of Rwanda, DRC and Uganda).  Through him, I tried to get a feel for security in the DRC just west of the Ugandan border, because on my next trip I'll be headed that way.  Upon reaching Kisoro, we each slowly and achingly managed to move our cramped bodies out of the car and on to our final destinations.  Mine: UWA information office.

At the UWA information office I met with Yonah, who I had warned via mobile phone the day earlier that I'd be coming through.  Through him I met the Tourism Warden, Chemonges, who was the current man in charge since all of the other senior wardens were on leave.  I spent a few hours with them and the bathroom - something in the pizza or chapati that I'd bought in Kabale was out to get me.  Through Yonah's urging I finally took an herbal med, although he was convinced that I should go to the pharmacy and buy "black charcoal," some sort of medication for upset stomachs.  I skipped dinner that night.

The next day up at Mgahinga, I did an interview with Chemo and the Community Conservation Ranger (also conveniently a Local Council chairman), had lunch and caught a ride with Chemo back into Kisoro town.  I stayed the night in Kisoro, catching the first bus out in the morning to Mbarara.  From Mbarara I would hop on another bus up to Katunguru where Joe and the others picked me up at the roadside intersection.  Along the way I met people and tried to learn different words in different languages.  About 10 minutes before Joe picked me up, I experienced my 3rd marriage proposal since arriving here in Uganda.  The man works for UWA and wanted to know what it would take for me to take his proposal seriously so that I would go with him to his village, meet his family, meet his neighbors and friends, and of course, the clincher, when would I take him with me to the US?  That day I learned how to say "I don't want to get married" in rukiga, which unfortunately, I forgot how to say moments later.

In QE, I stayed in Mweya with Joe, Lu and Yafit at a research house.  Lu is a wildlife veterinarian who also teaches at Makerere University in Kampala.  He's German but has been here for decades and knows loads about the human-wildlife conflict around QE and the political ecology of conservation in Africa in general.  Yafit is a biology student who came here to work with Lu because of her interest in big cats.  Joe was in QE setting up and checking wildlife camera traps.  I would spend the next few days rolling through the savannah with them and James (an expert with the radio collar tracking devices and a savannah 4x4 race car driver...not really, but he drives like a madman), checking camera traps, tracking wildlife (saw my first lion and leopards in the wild) and visiting a farm where a lion had devoured a calf in the middle of the night and a hippo had destroyed a corral.  The presence of large predators in this area made all of the human-wildlife conflict scenarios that I was learning about in Bwindi-Mgahinga that much more contentious.

Out here, many local community members see things as My Life or Wildlife.  Human-wildlife conflict is a daily battle, full blown warfare in my opinion, which means that the tension between humans and protected areas is sky high.  UWA and the NGOs struggle daily to try and show people the benefits of the protected areas, setting up revenue sharing schemes (which is probably mostly lost to corruption because of its district-based distribution mechanism) and educating on the values of wildlife and ecotourism.  But the villagers, whose gardens (aka farms) patch every inch of land all the way up to the park's borders, often face constant crop/livestock-raids by animals coming out of the parks to feast on the cultivated delicacies of their neighbors.

UWA and the NGOs who are charged with dealing with human-wildlife conflict often don't even show up when locals report animal raids and do little if anything to help.  Villagers are left to their own means, which include setting all kinds of animal traps, sending their children out to guard the gardens instead of going to school and killing endangered animals out of revenge. Poaching is a whole other hairy story and I have only superficially begun to delve into the issues of oil extraction and mining in the region.

I'm back in Kampala now with these and others issues swimming around in my brain.  I have chosen the topic that I'm going to write on while I'm here and many of these things will not be highlighted in that paper, but I know that if I don't focus my research, I will be lost in this place studying socio-ecological dynamics for years on end.  What I'm worried about is that despite all the studies and the people actually trying to do something, nature will lose and with that, humans too.  All those stunning animals and dense tropical mountain forests that I have seen in the last couple weeks or so are so perilously threatened and the forces are so much greater than even just the livelihoods of the villagers who live around their peripheries.  The driving causes of all of the environmental endangerment and extreme poverty comes from places like where I grew up, the U.S., Canada, Europe, etc.  The resources we demand, the arms that we supply, the colonial infrastructure that remains...it's like Yoshimi and the Pink Robots.