Dit artikel is hier in het Nederlands te lezen.
Some days ago, Aaron and Noah have again provided the Batwa groups that live at Lake Bunyonyi emergency relief. Contrary to all the previous times they did this, they could this time return home feeling joyful and grateful about the experience. For the first time since we have started providing the Batwa emergency food earlier this year, we found their children happily smiling.
However, the Batwa are definitely not doing well. We want everyone reading this to be explicitly aware of that. Fact is that the groups are still in big need of food and that on top of that, the current rainy season makes them suffer from coldness, because they lack warm clothes and a good shelter. The very young baby that could be seen in previously posted photos has died in the last weeks. It’s not their first child that died. Several Batwa children have died because of hunger since March this year.
But….there is also some uplifting news to share. Although the rainy season causes the Batwa additional problems, they are also finding Mother Nature on their side. During this season, she provides certain wild vegetables. Always having lived in the forests before they were evicted from there in the early nineties because of the mountain gorilla conservation projects, the Batwa people are of course aware of the existence of these vegetables. Yet, from where they stay now, they have to go far to find some small amounts of them. Those small amounts can certainly not be enough for the Batwa groups to survive from, but of course they are helpful, which is why the groups are now doing tireless efforts to gather at least those small amounts.
The emergency food we try to bring them on a regular basis is still very much needed for them to survive this extremely difficult situation they have ended up in as a consequence of the collapsing of the tourism sector following COVID-19 measures. Besides providing them the food, Aaron and Noah, as heartbroken as they left the groups some weeks ago, have also brought clothes for two children who hardly had any clothes left on their slender bodies. It is again proof of the extremely poor circumstances the Batwa have to survive in.
Please view it all in the photo slider below. The Batwa children were this time welcoming Aaron and Noah with big smiles. Besides feeling a bit more energized because of the small amounts of vegetables they can eat these weeks, the children have now realized that Aaron and Noah are returning visitors who come to provide them food on a regular basis. The children became happy and excited about seeing them again, they have started trusting them and even loved to sit in our boat and have a great time together. Their happy smiles mean so much to us as a team!
However, both the Batwa groups and we are most aware that the rainy season will soon come to an end. It simply means that the growth of the wild vegetables that are now blessings for the Batwa, on top of our emergency food, will also stop and that they will, as long as the tourism sector in Uganda does not start flourishing again, remain in big need of help!
Your donation will help us to provide the Batwa groups more emergency food.
Any donation, no matter how small will always be highly appreciated!
Of course we thank everyone who has donated to this cause over the last months!
Also interesting reads:
Living on the Edges of Ugandan Society: the Batwa
Another Unforgettable Experience: Visiting a Batwa Group at Lake Bunyonyi
The Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic are Falling Disproportionally on Most Vulneralbe Groups as the Batwa
HWMCO-Nederland & NiCA Foundation
‘We Fight Poverty by Bringing Development.’
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