wfn.org | Resettlement assistance by Diocese

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May 9, 1997
Episcopal News Service
Jim Solheim, Director
212-922-5385
ens@ecunet.org

97-1758
Resettlement assistance by Diocese of Dallas offers hope to Ugandan
pygmies

by Jim Goodson
        (ENS) The Episcopal Diocese of Dallas will spend $50,000 to
resettle 100 pygmy families in Uganda in the first parish clustering
project of 1997.
        "This is a wonderful project and a wonderful gift," Bishop John
W. Ntegyereize of Uganda said March 12 after learning of the decision
by the diocesan Executive Council. "The people of the Dallas diocese
should know they are helping a desperate people who have been
displaced from their homeland. These are people living in extreme
poverty with no hope for the future."
        The pygmies lived in the forests of southeastern Uganda until the
late 1980s when the Ugandan government created Bwindi National Park
as a preserve for mountain gorillas and other wild animals. The pygmies,
commonly called Batwa, were forced--often at gunpoint--out of the park
preserve.
        "These are people who roamed the forests hunting for food,"
Ntegyereize said. "They have no land of their own and no money with
which to purchase it. They are also looked down upon by every other
tribe and class of people in Uganda and throughout Africa."
        The Anglican Church of Uganda has become the region's only
advocate for the displaced. Most of the 2,000 or so pygmies had been
reduced to begging for survival; a few found domestic work or guarded
gardens from baboons.
        "Dancing for money was common and drunkenness and smoking
was the order of the day," the bishop said. "There was no adequate
medical treatment, no possibility of an education and no religious training
at all."

A new start on new land
        The church purchased a five-acre piece of land and settled 40
families there in 1991. Located adjacent to the Bwindi National Park--
their former homeland--the settlement is full of Batwa who have been
convinced by the church to perform self-sustaining work. It has often
been a struggle because of the centuries-long Batwan lifestyle of
wandering from place to place in search of food.
        "Presently, the majority of the members are stable in the project
and have embarked on somewhat serious cultivation and other activities,
including education and hygiene training," Ntegyereize said. "The
children have performed well in school and the Batwa are beginning to
mix with the rest of Ugandan society."
        Funds from the Diocese of Dallas will be used to resettle 100
families on newly-purchased land adjacent to the original settlement.
        "There will be houses, clean water and survival training
(agriculture, livestock and tailoring) to help them become self-sufficient,"
said Diane Stanton, coordinator of the project and wife of Bishop James
Stanton of the Diocese of Dallas. "These funds will allow us to purchase
land, build homes with small gardens, provide training, to build a
classroom and to develop an access road to the homesites."

Return to self-sufficiency
        The Batwa now have an opportunity to sustain themselves,
Ntegyereize said. "They will be equipped with the capacity to produce
their own food and other agricultural products for cash. We will have a
literate, productive and God-loving Batwa community with a higher
degree of self-esteem. This is likely to boost their integration into the
wider community."
        Only with that integration will the Batwa survive, according to
those working in and with the Ugandan church.
        "The Ugandan pygmies have responded to a changing world in
ways that are common to hunter-gatherers elsewhere," Ntegyereize said,
citing a long list that includes the Tepeth of Northern Uganda, the San
Bushmen of Namibia, the Aborigines of Australia and the Huo and Wa
of China. "Their history bears the same dissolution and eventual
destitution. "

--Jim Goodson is missioner of communications for the Diocese of Dallas.
This article is one in a series of occasional articles in the Episcopal News
Service that will highlight the Ecumenical Year of Churches in Solidarity
with Uprooted People.