Episcopal Press and News
Resettlement Assistance by Diocese of Dallas Offers Hope to Ugandan Pygmies
Episcopal News Service. May 9, 1997 [97-1758]
Jim Goodson, Missioner of Communications for the Diocese of Dallas
(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."
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."
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. "