Teacher’s Guide:
Major Problems Threatening the Batwa to Almost extinction
1. Indulgement in Prostitution
2. Lack of animal proteins
3. Lack of well constructed shelters
4. Lack of fuel wood
Causes
i) Batwa males being away (Ssese Islands) for [a] long time tempts their wives to be
indulgent in sexual activities, outside their marriage.
ii) Having being stopped from using the forest [now Bwindi Impenetrable National Park
specifically] for their livelihoods
iii) Former dependence on free food (begging - Kusheega)
iv) Having no source of food supply due to their reluctance to work manually.
Possible Solutions
a) Sensitizing them on the dangers of HIV/AIDS, voluntary HIV/AIDS testing, guidance
and councelling to link them to voluntary organizations such as TASO.
b) Supporting them in agricultural enterprises such as home gardening and small
animal raising/rearing like sheep, goats, pigs, chickens and rabbits. The above could
be best done by selecting at least four contact families who would act as model
families.
c) Supporting the contact families reasonable shelters. We [the cultural centre] have
already started this with two families (Zwigiras' and Tumulairwe Erics' families)
d) Putting up a stall in the town (Rubuguri) for their products in (b) above, whose
construction materials we have already organised.
e) Encouraging them to continue exploiting MDD [music, dance and drumming]
talents.