Archive for the ‘Community’ Category
This is Balemba. We’re quite worried. A villager from Rumangabo, where we live, has been missing since last Monday. He went up to Bukima, on the edge of the Gorilla Sector, to cultivate his crops, and has not been seen since. It’s about a four hour walk from Rumangabo to Bukima, and many of the villagers who fled Bukima when the fighting started had started doing the long walk back to their fields every day to tend their crops. They sleep in the valley, because the rebel territory is considered too dangerous. However, since last weekend nobody has been going back to Bukima. Befor this incident, the FARDC (the National Army) troops caught two rebels who were in government controlled area where we are. The FARDC officers told all the villagers not to go back to Bukima to cultivate incase of retalliations by the rebels. Unfortunately this one villager did not get the message and went anyway. We’re trying to get all the information we can but it’s very difficult. There have been many cases of villagers going missing in the rebel held area over the past six months, and never being seen again. It’s terrible, because the villagers have nothing to do with this terrible war, they are only the victims. They have to cultivate their crops to survive, but take huge risks in going behind enemy lines. We will start to report on these disappearances, because it is one of those things that nobody hears about.
This is Balemba. We are just beginning to develop the informer network around the gorilla sector. The approach is to work on the edge of the forest. A worrying development is that there is beginning to be more and more livestock, and some of it is regularly going into the park. But there is still nobody living around Bukima because people are still very scared of the rebels. Only Luzaria, the widow that I spoke of in the last post, who lives on her own with her two sheep, is living near Bukima. We are all quite scared, but continue to work as best we can.
This is Emmanuel in Goma. We are struggling to make progress in the gorilla sector. It is incredibly frustrating, but we just have to keep trying. While massive progress has been made in stopping the charcoal trade coming from the park, we are completely stuck when it comes to getting close to the gorillas to protect them. The rebels are making sure that the rangers can’t get into the gorillas sector. They’ve threatened to kill any rangers who try to get to Bukima or Jomba, and have placed landmines on the road to Bukima. They have said that conservation groups can come, if we bring funding for them, but that’s unacceptable to us. But we have been working on a few new ideas, that may work. Some of you may know Balemba who set up the Virunga Youth Alliance. He is an extremely dynamic ranger who is really keen on sport, his community, and of course the Mountain Gorillas. He thinks that he can work with the displaced people through the Youth Alliance, to set up a simple monitoring system around the gorilla sector. At the moment local farmers live down in the valley, but walk up to Bukima every day to cultivate their fields. It is accepted by the rebels, and provides us with an opportunity to put some basic monitoring in place. It won’t be perfect, because they can’t go into the forest, but they can certainly act as our eyes and ears around the gorilla sector. This may even give us some insights into how to make progress through local community members. It’s a long shot, but certainly worth trying. We will be giving them a small stipend through your donations, and we’ll report on what’s going on at Bukima at least once a week.
This is Jean Bosco. As you know I am the Community Conservation Officer for the southern sector of Virunga National Park.
After the massacre of the Rugendo family in July we carried out a project in communities to raise awareness about protecting Mountain Gorillas, through the use of films and talks. We did this in schools, churches and the military camps of the 9th brigade. In our team there was of course Director Norbert Mushenzi, my boss, and 3 guys from WWF including Grand-pere (which means Grandfather in English), Gerard and Modogo.
Director Norbert Mushenzi opened the talks. The first session took place near the military camp at Rumangabo.
I also participated in each session. This one is in a church.
People listened. By watching the film and listening to our talks the communities were able to better understand the importance of gorillas as part of our national heritage. We talked about the way of life of gorillas, and how they behave in the family unit. Mountain Gorillas are different to other animals for us.
These are children at a school who live near the Gorilla Sector.
Grand-pere from WWF spoke. He also spoke in Lingala at this military camp because many of the military here are from the west of the country.
Here again are members of the military and their wives. They enjoyed the films and asked us to come back.
And this one is at a church in Buvunga, 2km north of Rumangabo park station.
Justin, a trainee, talks to the congregation.
The people who took part and watched the films all condemned the July killings.
Jean Bosco
I am Jean Bosco Bichamakara and I head up community relations in Rumangabo. This means that I work with the communities that live around the Gorilla Sector and in the southern sector of Virunga National Park.
I work very closely with Innocent and Diddy and so I will also start contributing to this blog. I have been in this job since 2003 and with ICCN for 9 years.
My name Bichamakara actually means “Forbid Charcoal” in the KinyaBwisha language.
So my job is to protect the park and to work with the local communities to do this. For example, if animals leave the park to steal the crops of the local populations, we need to intervene to help solve this problem. Buffaloes, elephants and gorillas are the main animals that do this. Remember the Rugendo family in particular does this because they are so habituated to humans.
So we often help coerce the animals into re-entering the park, and we try and educate the local communities into the importance of preserving our park. When we finally get stability, tourism will be one of the major sources of revenue for the local populations. So we need to protect Virunga and the wildlife so that this can become a reality.
Here I am with my colleague Pierre Ndeze. His grandfather was a tribal chief who died in February. Ndeze, the Mountain Gorilla daughter of Safari who is now orphaned in Goma after the Rugendo massacre, is named after him.
I have 12 Rangers in my team, so we are 13 including myself. There are 12 patrol posts in the southern sector of Virunga National Park, so this is how we come to this figure - 1 community relations officer at each post.
I look forward to posting more about my work on this blog and receiving your comments.
Jean Bosco
I feel I need to explain where we hope to go with this blog.
I can honestly say that the blog has had a big influence on our lives in Virunga, and I feel that this will only increase. The blog has made many people aware of the difficulties and the challenges that we face, and has brought us many friends from around the world. The blog has also been instrumental in helping us to face the many crises that we have had to struggle with this year. When the situation became very difficult, as it has in the last couple of weeks, many, many people offered their support. We have raised over $50,000 in donations for the emergency response to the gorilla killings, which is phenomenal, and changes everything with respect to our chances of protecting the 100 or so gorillas that remain. But the support that we have received is even more than the money that has been given to us. It is the knowledge that we are not alone in this effort to protect the gorillas.
This blog began as an individual exercise, that I initiated in January with the help of the WildlifeDirect team, but it gradually evolved into a wonderful team effort, involving a large number of people with one thing in common: a devotion to the protection of Mountain Gorillas. So my team in the Gorilla Sector has become involved, with posts from Augustin, and lots of input from the others, and the WildlifeDirect team have posted on it as well. In recent months, a growing number of people from all over the world have joined our effort. So we would hope that you, wherever you are, whatever you do, would become an active participant in the effort to protect the mountain gorillas. A big part of the struggle is public awareness. If you have ideas on how to build this up, do please post comments on the blogs, or write to gorillacampaign@wildlifedirect.org. With your permission, we will write some of them up as posts on this blog because they are an inspiration to us and to others. This is an example of the kind of incredibly positive comments that people have posted: SCOLSON on July 30th, 2007 at 9:30 am
I just wanted all to know I work at a very large company and I am now setting up a donation box to help fund these great rangers. Paulin I am spreading the word on the plight of these wonderful gorillas that you so desperatly are trying to protect. If I could send a whole army I would. Blessed Be…Stephanie…Oklahoma sheryl on July 30th, 2007 at 11:23 am
Nice work, Stephanie! I can’t set up a donation box, but I’ve printed color copies of the e-mail I got from Virginia and posted them around the office. Then, I distilled the document into a PDF and posted it - with links - to the company BBS. s. We’ve also had offers of support from lawyers, web company managers, athletes, teachers, etc. all of which have a huge amount of advice and experience that we could learn from. Saving Virunga’s gorillas can only succeed if it becomes a worldwide effort. So, what now? I will be working from the Northern Sector of Virunga for a few months. Norbert Mushenzi, an old friend and colleague, will be warden in charge of the Southern Sector where the Mountain Gorillas are. Norbert is probably the most experienced of all wardens in Congo, and the gorillas will be in excellent hands during that period. He will be participating actively in this blog. So will the Mountain Gorilla team, Augustin who runs the Bukima Patrol Post, Innocent who is head of gorilla monitoring, Didi who is responsible for tourism, and others. We would all love it if we could also include input from you into this blog - the efforts of people around the world who are now playing such an active role in protecting the gorillas in Congo. This blog is about gorilla protection and your efforts, as part of our team, are now a big part of it.
In 2003 I started an institute. Here we call it a Superior Institute, or Institut Superieur. In the area of Rutshuru, in the southern part of Virunga but outside of the park so there are populations, there is a lack of educational establishments for the local population. And we all need education. So I started the Institut Superieur de l’Ingenierie de Developement et Gestion de l’Environment (Superior Institute for Development Engineering and Environmental Management). It is in a small town called Kiwandja, which is actually where Augustin is from. I obtained, off my own initiative, premises and computers and gradually recruited teachers. Now we are 19 teachers. We teach in a modular format, so for example I may have to be there for a week teaching my part. Because I am busy with my job I cannot be there all the time. Now I am proud to say we have awarded diplomas to 34 individuals since we started 4 years ago.
Every 3 months we hold a meeting at Rumangabo with local leaders and authorities to talk about protecting Virunga National Park and working with the local populations. This committee is called Concd which stands for Convergence pour la Conservation et le Developement, Convergence for Conservation and Development. So it is a forum if you like, and traditional chiefs, military heads, police chiefs and Rangers all come together to address the important issues. This is a very important aspect of protecting the park as communication is paramount to any success and diminishing threats from poachers and charcoal burners and others. We find solutions to conflict. Here are photos from the most recent meeting. You can see me addressing the group (in the second photo), and also the military, police and local population representatives. At the end we all had a group photo. I am at the front next to the police chief.
Rubiga, the murdered adult female from the Kabirizi family, was buried on Monday at Rumangabo in Virunga National Park, alongside other gorillas. An autopsy was carried out on her body, the two bullets removed, and then we said farewell. These photos are horrible. But it is the reality of what the Gorillas and the Rangers have been through since Friday. It is important that the world sees. I do not want to offend or upset, but it is what is happening. First the Rangers had to move Rubiga from where she was found shot dead.
Then they built a wooden stretcher to carry her down the mountain.
And we carried her towards Rumangabo… where she will rest in peace.
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