Part 2–Rwenshama
In August 2022, the PICC program visited the rural community of Rwenshama, Rukungiri District, in Southwestern Uganda. We worked with the students of BACHO (Banyabutumbi Cultural Heritage Organization) where we learned so much from the children and the community about their wildlife and their own lives living within the borders of Queen Elizabeth National Park. The Banyabatumbi are a proud and joyful people and welcomed us with open arms, wonderful music, and jubilant dancing!
The delightful dancing masks this community’s overwhelming number of serious life obstacles, including insufficient food, water and housing, a high rate of HIV/AIDS, a lack of educational opportunities, and few livelihoods besides subsistence gleaning and fishing.
In spite of these challenges, the community is working positively towards a goal of improving their education, health and lifestyles, while learning to live in harmony with the wildlife that frequents their village.
Elephants and African buffalo are almost daily visitors to the Rwenshama community. Just down the road, elephants and hippos are also along the shores of Lake Edward at the busy Fish Landing Site where people move cautiously around them while conducting their daily fishing tasks. Also coming to the community at night are hippos, hyenas, and lions. Each of these animals poses a very real risk to the people of Rwenshama who walk along the village trails between the wild animals at all times of the day and night.
Future opportunities for these children expanded significantly when Ugandan Akiikih Apollo founded BACHO. Akiikih is the Executive Director of BACHO, lives in the community with his family, and runs the program in partnership with Frank Namara (General Secretary of BACHO). Akiikih and Frank, along with the teachers at the BACHO-K school, are all volunteers and are not paid for their critical work.
Akiikih Apollo holds a Bachelor’s degree in Public Administration and Management and has always had a strong interest in music, dance and drama. After experiencing the conditions at Rwenshema and meeting the HIV-orphan children, he founded the BACHO organization with the hope of helping the local community, while also preserving the Banyatumbi culture through art and music, and promoting co-existence with local wildlife. Akiikih manages the day-to-day programs of BACHO and helps to nurture and guide 93 orphan children that survive in child-head households, living in housing that Sahaya-BACHO provides. He has also created a successful children’s cultural dance group, the Lake Edward Cultural Performers, and trains them in dance, musical instruments and performance, sharing their enthusiasm and love of their culture with surrounding communities. PC: Stuart Hooper
Frank Namara is familiar with the situation in Rwenshama through his own childhood experience. He grew up in an environment where people frequently experienced traumatic conditions from the wild animals from Queen Elizabeth National Park, and he also understands the risk of fishing on Lake Edward, a dangerously unpredictable lake where most fisherman don’t know how to swim. As a professional social worker (he holds a Bachelors’ degree in social work and social administration), Frank also has a post-graduate degree in law, a Master’s degree in social work, and is the Head of the Department of Social Sciences at Great Lakes Regional University in SW Uganda. He uses his extensive education and experience to collaborate with Akiikih in developing strong, sustainable programs through BACHO. PC: Stuart Hooper
Probably one of the most immediate challenges the Rwenshama community faces is the inability to grow their own food crops because of the elephants, hippos and other wild animals that frequent the village. This results in children often not eating, which means they are not able to attend school or training. As Frank says “Food is the first medicine”.
Working towards a solution for the children’s hunger, Sahaya International is providing funds through BACHO to purchase food for the orphans and children living with HIV. They currently don’t have sufficient funds to care for all of the BACHO children, but are endeavoring to raise funds to do more, including providing better housing.
In Rwenshama, educational opportunities for children have been realized through the extraordinary work of Akiikih and Frank, who were the force behind the BACHO school being completed and operational. With support from Sahaya (BACHO.Sahaya.org) some of the older students are now completing training in tourism and conducting internships in becoming eco-guides.
One surprising revelation while conducting the PICC program with these children was the complete lack of animosity towards the wildlife, in spite of the dangers and hardships the animals cause. The children shared oral stories of gathering firewood and hiding from elephants and hippos, watching for crocodiles and snakes, waiting out dangers by climbing trees, and some even had somber stories about losing a parent and siblings to wild animal attacks.
Queen Elizabeth National Park
Only a short drive from Rwenshama, Queen Elizabeth National Park is one of Uganda’s most popular tourist destinations, having some of the highest number of visitors to any park in Uganda. It is a bird watcher’s paradise with over 600 bird species, has more than 95 mammal species including many lions, ungulates, and primates, and hosts guided visits with game drives, boat cruises, chimpanzee tracking, and night tours.
A couple of the older BACHO students were given the opportunity to join our group on game drives through Queen Elizabeth National Park. They learned how to use a DSLR camera with zoom lenses and captured stunning images of the wildlife.
There is great potential for the Rwenshama area to be a base for tourists visiting Queen Elizabeth National Park. The BACHO students who are training as professional guides can have successful careers taking visitors to the park and other natural areas in SW Uganda. We are optimistic that PICC’s support of these students’ skills and education can contribute towards building capacity in conservation leadership and developing conservation-compatible livelihoods.
Photography Inspiring Children in Conservation (PICC)
The PICC team rendezvoused in Entebbe and traveled over rough roads for around 10 hours to arrive in Rwenshama. Our project aim was to provide PICC program resources to the BACHO children and meet Akiikih, Frank and other supporters of BACHO. Through supporting these young people from pre-kindergarten through young adult in learning more about wildlife and teaching them skills including illustration, field techniques and wildlife photography, we aim to help them build conservation capacity in developing future careers in ecotourism. We are pleased to hear that in the months following our visit, the BACHO-K students are continuing to learn from the PICC materials with some of the older students stepping up and becoming teachers to the younger ones.
Our support of this community is ongoing– please let us know if you’d like to help support our efforts! To learn more about BACHO’s variety of activities, visit BACHO.sahaya.org.
