Where is the line between cultural explorer and voyeur? The ‘Batwa Experience’
Where is the line between cultural exploration and exploitative voyeurism while travelling among indigenous peoples?
In this “Good Tourism” Insight, Gavin Anderson explores the danger and promise of travel & tourism’s involvement with indigenous people through the lens of his recent work with the Batwa of southwest Uganda.
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I first met the Batwa, the indigenous forest people of central Africa, in the early 1990s as a traveller camping in the Semliki Valley of Uganda.
I encountered the spectacle of overland trucks of tourists arriving to spend an hour with the “Pygmy forest people”; spending money (on photos and trinkets) that was subsequently spent on exploitatively expensive alcohol in the village shops. The sight made me avoid the emerging ‘Batwa Experiences’.
When I returned to Uganda as a development worker in 1997, I seldom visited Twa communities. I lived there for nine years, yet my work did not involve the Batwa at all, and I continued to feel that tourism’s interest in them was morally questionable.
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In 2023 I returned to Uganda to finalise plans for a trekking journey through the lakes, mountains, forests, and villages of southwest Uganda. The trip would take us through the Echuya, Mgahinga, and Bwindi forests that had been the ancestral homes of the Twa.
I came with the experience of working with other indigenous peoples in tourism; particularly the Dolpo-pa, a Tibetan people in the high Himalayan valleys of northwest Nepal. I had directly experienced how travel & tourism that works with local indigenous people can benefit cultural preservation, provide income to communities, and give travellers a worthwhile experience.
A key question I had was: How could something similar be done with the Batwa of Uganda who had firstly been dispossessed by conservationists and government, and then disrespected and demeaned by the tourism industry?
The Batwa: A people dispossessed by conservationists and government
The Batwa lived a hunter-gatherer lifestyle in the equatorial forests, gathering edible and medicinal plants, and hunting forest animals. It was a traditional and ancient lifestyle that had existed in harmony with the forest ecosystem for generations.
In the early 1990s, conservation bodies claimed that the Batwa’s very existence threatened the forests and the wildlife, including the endangered mountain gorilla. The Government of Uganda agreed … continue reading this “Good Tourism” Insight in full at The “Good Tourism” Blog.
