Episode 5 – Born From Here/ Nkanzarirwa Hanu

Land Body Ecologies Podcast is a series of six stand-alone episodes sharing stories of solastalgia from land-dependent and Indigenous communities affected by environmental change. In Episode 5, Born From Here, we travel to the edges of the Bwindi Impenetrable Forests in Kanungu district in Southwestern Uganda. Looking to the dense green hills that hold fields of sunflowers and ridges overlooking sacred trees, listeners hear stories of the ancestral land of the Batwa community.

Clouds constantly rise and fall in the hills of Bwindi Impenetrable Forest. This is known as Muntaba and is a place the Batwa would not visit as it is meant to be spiritual and sited with gold. The Batwa were once forest dwellers who used to live in Ekyuya, Semuliki, Bwindi, and Mgahinga, their ancestral lands in Uganda. In the early 1990s, government authorities evicted the Batwa from the forest and their home in the name of free land for wildlife and forest conservation. The evictions left the Batwa struggling to survive and facing extreme discrimination on the margins of their former home. These forests lie within the biodiversity-rich Albertine Rift eco-region and are sites of global biodiversity importance, famously home to half of the world’s population of endangered mountain gorillas.

In Born From Here, we hear the lasting impacts on their health, culture, and livelihoods 30 years on from evictions. The episode features Batwa herbalists, artists, and rare insights from elders on their experiences of living in and out of the forest.

Land Body Ecologies Podcast is produced by Invisible Flock and this episode, Born from Here, is also produced with Action for Batwa Empowerment Group.