Baraza

Category: Albertine Rift Project, Bujumbura, Burundi, Lake Tanganyika, National Parks and protected areas, conservation | Date: Mar 19 2009 | By: baraza

Part of our MacArthur project mission is reach out to countries that fall within the Albertine Rift region. Our next destination was Burundi. Enoch and myself (Masumi), set out for Bujumbura, the capital city.

My first impression of Burundi was defined by the neglected rust covered Air Burundi passenger plane sandwiched amidst UN choppers. Typical Central African scenario right there, I thought to myself. All the websites and news related to Burundi we had were of travel advisory warnings and security issues within the country. We were taking a risk by traveling here. Despite the little knowledge I have about the country it was summed up by the image the plane portrayed. Destroyed, neglected and left to the elements to consume whatever was left.

I feel very differently about it now.

Overall, Burundi is in it’s infancy as far as conservation work is concerned and most of the organisations around are working to alleviate poverty and as a strategy have incorporated some wildlife and environmental protection activities. There has hardly been any previous work carried out on biodiversity surveys or general ecosystem monitoring and thus most environmental organisations are carrying out this baselines research for initiation of conservation projects and activities.

Perhaps in the near future with adequate funding these organisations and others will increase in numbers and implement conservation activities on a wider scale to protect the national parks and reserves in the country. There are a few organisations we did meet that conduct direct conservation but also have a strong social sector involved. Without addressing the poverty of the regions, especially around the 15 protected areas. conservation initiatives would not work and the people are very aware of this.
We had the pleasure of meeting a number of representatives from various Conservation Organisations here in Bujumbura. In general there are groups of concerned individuals who have formed organisations to conserve the remaining natural resources and wildlife this beautiful country has to offer. A major conflict area is deforestation. The population is high, putting immense pressures on the forests for timber for fuel. Many projects have put in place re-afforestation schemes as well as starting tree nurseries to reduce some of the pressure on indigenous forest. Burundi is home to an endemic palm species, I cannot recall the name right now but will make sure I write it in the next post. The most touching part of the conservation work going on here is that all the organisations work together, share information and ideas. This is something I feel most places have lost and it’s what WildlifeDirect aims to promote.

I am very encouraged by the motivation and enthusiasm from everyone we met here. The people of Burundi want change and an opportunity to rebuild their country and protect their wildlife and environment. The media has shed a very harsh and negative light in this region of the world and muffled the peoples voices. I hope that through WildlifeDirect blogs we will be able to help give them a voice and give the rest of the world a platform to support this noble cause.

I promise to post photos as soon as I locate the right USB cable, if not now then in Uganda when Maina and Victor meet me.

Tags: Albertine Rift, Burundi, conservation, Lake Tanganyika, MacArthur Foundation

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Category: Uncategorized, WildlifeDirect news | Date: Mar 03 2009 | By: baraza

A recent visit of the WildlifeDirect team to Rwanda (Thanks to the MacArthur Foundation),  gave the team and bloggers (and potential bloggers) an opportunity to put faces to the names they have been seeing appended to the mails. Having been a blogger for a few months (Albertine rift birds), I was recruited to support the WildlifeDirect project that is working in the Albertine Rift. On this occasion, I was among the team mainly as a “field guide” in the country of a thousand hills, Rwanda.

               “country of a thousand hills over the horizon”

Having had an enjoyable time at Bwindi, we were escorted by our cab driver, Habib to the border of Uganda and Rwanda. From here we took a kigali bound bus. Here things changed from left to right and the driver driving at a maximum speed of 40 km/h (it would be twice as fast in Kenya). Yes, it would be probably be a trip around more than a thousand hills.

Kigali City

After enjoying an evening and a night at the clean, safe Kigali city, we embarked on the main activity of visiting and sharing our mission with conservationists in the country. This took us from Kigali to Ruhengeri and further to Gisenyi (Goma). We realized how interesting biodiversity conservation work in the country is. One easily concludes that this country has very interesting biodiversity but the threats are huge too.The team was well received and all organizations promised to use the Wildlifedirect platform to enhance and improve their conservation work.

 Gift from Paula to Julie (Art for Conservation)

Vincent(AoC Volunteer) with Enoch, Victor and Masumi at AoC tree Nursery.

Tags: Albertine Rift, Biodiversity conservation, MacArthur Foundation, Rwanda

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Category: Forests, WildlifeDirect news | Date: Feb 20 2009 | By: baraza

Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park

The WildlifeDirect team then went to Bwindi Impenetrable National Park on the way to Rwanda.  This involved a bus trip to Kabale in Uganda then we took a cab to Bwindi a ride of about 2 hours.  We arrived there at around six in the evening.  The road there was being repaired and it was basically a smooth trip.  The scenery was amazing to say the least.

The Parks Boundary

We got there in the evening at around five in the evening, hoping to see the famed gorillas but we weren’t in luck as we were told that to actually see the gorillas we would have to go deep into the park so we had to settle for giant earthworms.

 Giant Earthworm

At the park is The Institute of Tropical Forest Conservation who are about to join our blog network.  We met Doug, Miriam and Joel who treated us to a sumptous dinner where we combined work and some food.  Daniel who is a field assistant regaled us with stories of his gorilla tracking excursions.  As conversations went on Enoch, Doug and Joel found out that they’d all worked in Papua New Guinea but at different times.

Bwindi is very cold and dark at night and it really lives to its name ‘Impenetrable Forest’.  Nights there are filled with animal sounds some eerie others normal, so we tucked in and prepared ourselves for the next leg of the journey that would take to Rwanda.

Tags: Bwindi, ITFC, MacArthur Foundation, wildlifedirect

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Category: WildlifeDirect news | Date: Feb 16 2009 | By: baraza

Myself, Victor and Enoch departed on a visit to Uganda and Rwanda in an attempt to expand the awareness about WildlifeDirect through the Albertine Rift Region and meet various conservation organisations who could join our network and blog. We left from Nairobi on the 20th by bus and started our journey through the various towns and villages on the western side of Kenya to our destination, Kampala. We had a 15 minute stop in Kisumu before we got to the Busia border between Kenya and Uganda. Immigration forms in hand, we crossed the border. On the Ugandan side the woman behind the glass pane laughed when I gave her my passport, asking, ‘are you really a kenyan?’ I get that a lot, being a forth generation Indian, Kenyan which surprises me considering the history of East Africa. The landscape was a steady progression from tea and coffee plantations of Kericho, the urban development of Kisumu, grass plains and banana plantations of the Ugandan country side to the urban capital, Kampala. The whole journey took us 14 hours in total and as you can imagine we were shattered by the time we arrived in Kampala.

Banana plantations in the Ugandan countryside.

The next morning our meetings begun with a drive to the famous Makerere University to meet with Richard Asaba who may become the WildlifeDirect representative and support person for bloggers in Uganda. Once my feeling of great awe and nostalgia of being at this symbolic place of East African history had dissipated i was able to get down to business.

Richard, his assistant Richard and Enoch at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine in Makerere University, Kampala.

Richard, Enoch and me at Veterinary Faculty in Makerere University.

Victor, Me, Enoch, Dr. Innocent Rwego and Richard on an impromptu meeting outside the University.

The next few days we spent making appointments and travelling from one organisation to another on all sides of Kampala, while almost getting stuck in a flood on the highway. We tried taking photos to demonstrate the severity of it for the purpose of the blog but it was a new camera and getting the hang of it while in a moving car was proving to be more of a challenging task than we thought. Don’t be alarmed at the poor quality of our photos for the series of posts on our Albertine Rift Visit.

Torrential downpour in Kampala, a view from our taxi windscreen.

An attempt to capture the flooded roads after 15minutes of heavy rainfall.

Tags: MacArthur Foundation, Makerere, Partnerships, Uganda, wildlifedirect

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