We've barely entered the national park when our guide stops suddenly and holds up a hand to call for silence. His eyes gaze deep into the forest and he crouches. We do the same. Our hearts beat fast. Has he spotted something already? A golden monkey? A forest elephant?
Without warning, he yells, claps his hands and chants an ancient prayer to Biheko, god of the forest, just as his ancestors have always done. Stephen is no ordinary guide, and this, the Batwa Cultural Trail, is no ordinary walk in the woods. The woods in question are the dense forest of Mgahinga Gorilla national park, a 33 sq km area among the volcanic Virunga mountains in the far southwestern corner of Uganda. Though small, the park is home to a vast diversity of plant, animal and bird life, including the famed mountain gorilla, a mainstay of Uganda's tourist industry. Yet these rare beasts are not the only ones to lay claim to the Virungas.
Stephen is one of the Batwa, the "Pygmy people" indigenous to these mountain slopes. Evicted from their homes when the forest was gazetted as a national park in 1991, they are now a displaced ethnic group threatened with extinction. And though interaction between tourists and Batwa is hardly a new thing, control over excursions has always rested solely with outsiders. The Batwa, mainly excluded from Ugandan society, sing when they're told to, dance when they're told to and must be grateful for what they're given. Now, for the first time, the Batwa are taking control. This trail is the first time that the Batwa have had a direct stake in the tourism they're engaged in, bringing income direct to their communities.
These nomadic hunter-gatherers are widely acknowledged to have been the first human residents of forest areas stretching across much of what is now Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo. As other ethnic groups arrived, cutting the forest to provide land for crops and livestock, Batwa populations became fragmented – but at least there was enough woodland for their environmentally sustainable way of life to endure.
For Ugandan Batwa, everything changed in 1991 with the creation of formal conservation areas that outlawed all human activity in the Virungas and in nearby Bwindi. Suddenly forced to live outside of the forest, unable to return to hunt small animals, collect wild honey or gather fruits, the Batwa found their traditional skills and vast knowledge of the forest ill-suited to life outside it.
They never sought to own the land they lived on, and so when they were evicted they were deemed unworthy of compensation. Now the majority are landless squatters, some of the poorest inhabitants of one of the world's poorest countries, watching as tourists buy $500 permits to visit gorillas in the forest that was once theirs.
The Batwa Cultural Trail is a new initiative launched by the Uganda Wildlife Authority and the United Organisation for Batwa Development in Uganda. It is a fairly gentle five- to six-hour nature walk through the lower slopes of the Virungas and means that for the first time the Batwa have a stake in the conservation and management of the national park, even though they still live outside it. Communities such as Stephen's receive payments that allow them to buy food, clothes, soap and other daily necessities; for tourists, this is an increasingly rare opportunity to see the forest as it has been viewed for millennia, not just as an animal habitat but as a human one too, a vastly complex combination of larder, medicine cabinet, home and temple.
Our day begins in Kisoro, the battered and dusty town at the base of the Virungas, about eight hours by bus from Uganda's capital, Kampala. Black volcanic rocks litter the roadsides, broken only by a central patch of greenery where goats, sheep and cattle spend the day grazing. Despite the presence of the Kindly Service Station and the Peace and Loving Bar, Kisoro would be considered pleasant but easily forgettable were it not for the 4,127m volcanic peak of Muhabura that glowers overhead, its cone invariably shrouded in a mass of swirling cloud.
It's towards Muhabura that we depart. At Muhabura base camp we meet our interpreter, Benjamin, and our Batwa guides, Stephen, George Wilson and Safari. They aren't as short as we expect but they all exude a wiry toughness, and from the moment of Stephen's prayer to Biheko it's clear that the Batwa's relationship with the forest is as deep as the woods themselves.
We're introduced to the fruits that form a pre-hunting breakfast, and to others that the Batwa give to their children as toys or even dolls. We're shown leaves that when ground into a paste can ward off evil spirits, roots that can cure infestation, plants that lower blood pressure and the black crust of an ants' nest that alleviates fungal skin disease. Nothing here is as it seems; where we see bright yellow fruits, the Batwa see the ingredients of natural soap.
Of everything that we're shown, it's the long, sinuous creepers that hang from the trees that best exemplify the Batwa's connection with the forest. Stephen tells us that, when cut into strings and dried, the creepers could be woven into bags. "They were so strong they would last all the way to Congo or Rwanda," he tells us proudly. When the Batwa wore animal hides, these strings would form their belts. The name of the creepers, umuse, translates as "a cousin whom you pray with and respect". The forest isn't just the Batwa's home – it's their family.
Looking at Mgahinga through the Batwa's eyes is a source of wonder but also of sadness. Stephen picks at the umuse with his fingers, then looks us in the eye. "Once we could exchange these strings for food or money. Now we've lost them, and our lives have changed completely."
When we stop for lunch in a clearing, we ask Stephen about his life since he left the forest. Like most of his people, his family squats on poor-quality land belonging to non-Batwa. Its value, two million Ugandan shillings (around £580), is way beyond anything Stephen will ever be able to afford. Instead, his community's human waste will gradually raise the land's fertility, and after about a year he'll be moved on.
"It isn't like when we were in the forest," he says. "There we could sleep in a hollow, or a shelter made from branches. Now we need real shelters, and when we move we have to build them again, and again, and again. Because we move from place to place, our children can't go to school."
With this initiative so new, it's difficult to know how much the trail will benefit Batwa communities. Stephen knows that the income will help his people survive from one day to the next but he's unsure about the long-term future. "We don't have a way to support ourselves," he says. "Our children aren't studying, they have no food to eat, they get sick and die. We're dependent on others to lend us land. If that ended, the Batwa would be finished forever."
The children of Safari, 38, and Stephen, 40, can barely remember the lives their people once led, yet losing touch with the forest isn't Stephen's biggest fear. "Of course we're sad. We're worried. We used to live long lives because of what the forest gave us. One woman lived to 120 because she was here. Now, we three are some of the oldest in our communities.
"The hope is to be given land of our own. That would be peace. Even if our children had no access to the forest, they could have a future."
As the trail continues, we're more aware than ever that the skills we're witnessing – trapping animals with snares made from branches and vines, finding and collecting wild honey, tracking buffalo and bushbucks (antelopes) – are consigned to history. For our guides, this was real, everyday life, learned from their fathers in the isolation of the forest. Our children, like the Batwa's, are unlikely ever to witness it first-hand.
We arrive at Garama cave, a 200m-long lava tube beneath Mount Gahinga. This chamber was once a royal residence, the sacred heart of the forest, a meeting place, food store, court of law. We enter and Stephen tells us that, in the past, non-Batwa would not have been allowed access. Crouching beneath the low, damp ceiling, we make our way to the depths of the cavern. Benjamin extinguishes his lantern and we stand for a moment in the pure darkness, listening to drops of water echoing in the blackness, the sudden fluttering of bats. Then we hear a low hum, which becomes a voice, and another, and another, music piercing the darkness, 20, 30 men and women together, filling Garama with song as in centuries past.
The lantern is lit again, and the chambers in front and to our right are filled with Batwa from local communities. First they sing to us a lament, remembering what they had and what they have lost, the forest they love and the lives they now lead. Then they sing to us a welcome song, because we are visitors to those who have received so few, new friends to those who have been forgotten.
This was no ordinary walk in the woods.
