AMABERE GA NYINAMWIRU: Kabarole's top tourist site

AMABERE GA NYINAMWIRU: Kabarole's top tourist site

A guide pointing at the breast like structures in the Amabere ga nyinawiru caves in Kabalore District. PHOTO by Felix Basiime. 

By FELIX BASIIME  (email the author)

Posted  Wednesday, February 29  2012 (http://www.monitor.co.ug/artsculture/Reviews/-/691232/1355482/-/bm57w/-/index.html)

In Summary

The sight of rocks with breast-like structures is what drives thousands of people to Mabere ga nyinamwiru in kabolore District.

When I came to work in Kabarole about two years ago, I was told of all sorts of stories about amabere ga nyina mwiru, the famous stalagmites and stalactites that look like cow breasts.

The amazing story about their oozing of milk made me long to visit the place and may be squeeze one like we squeeze cow udders in my homeland Ankole. These amazing features are approximately 10 kilometers away from Fort Portal town. At the site, I was given guides who took me down to the caves. The steaming sound of waterfalls and cold breeze at the entrance welcomed us.

Then a slippery path guided us through as we penetrated into a cool green world of moss and fern covered by trees and rocks. It is a sight of beauty, calm and awe.

“No, don’t touch these, you will affect their growth,” said one of the guides at the caves at Nyakasura falls.

“You see this milky stuff, it is calcium oozing through the rocks because of the water falls above us that rolls over the rocks forming these breast like rocks, the size keeps on growing with years until one arm touches the ground to make a strong pillar” explained the guide.

What the guide was talking about are the overhanging climbers intertwined with rocks that surround this cultural and eco-tourism site. Hanging rock pillars broken down by chemical reaction between water and salt in the course of years that form breast-like pointed small pillars from which the name Amabere comes from.

But to the locals, the name of the caves is based on a historical myth whose origin is widely believed by them that the breast-like pointed pillars were as a result of Bukuku’s beautiful daughter, Nyina Mwiru fleeing to this place in protest of her father’s refusal to allow her to marry a man of her choice.

Bukuku who was a very rich man served as a chief in the legendary Batembuzi dynasty that are the current Babiito kings of Tooro and Bunyoro kingdoms. “In anger and frustration, Nyina Mwiru decided to cut off her breasts at this spot,” says Apollo Musinguzi, the guide pointing to one of the rock basements.

Inside the caves, lies a huge flat cave roof basement dotted with water drops splashing as if rain is drizzling.

Geographically, these rocks and caves are called stalagmites and stalactites. Stalagmites may also refer to a type of fungus according to Wikipedia. A stalagmite is a type of speleothem that rises from the floor of a limestone cave due to the dripping of mineralised solutions and the deposition of calcium carbonate.

The corresponding formation on the ceiling of a cave is known as a stalactite. If these formations grow together, the result is known as a column.

Stalagmite should normally not be touched: Since the rock build up is formed by minerals solidifying out of the water solution onto the old surface, skin oils can disturb where the mineral water will cling, thus affecting the growth of the formation. Oils and dirt from the hands can also stain the formation and change its colour permanently.

Similar structures can also form in lava tubes, known as lavacicles, although the mechanism of formation is very different. Stalactites and stalagmites can also form on concrete ceilings and floors, although they form much more rapidly there than in the natural cave environment.

The largest stalagmite in the world is 62.2 metres (220 feet) high and is located in the cave of Cueva San Martin Infierno, Cuba.

Their growth rates are so slow that once broken, they cannot recover during a human life span of time. Thus, stalactites and stalagmites are considered natural heritage objects and are protected by law in most countries, and their collection, mining, and selling is prohibited.

Indeed at Amabeere ga nyina mwiru, Yasamu Rubombora, the landlord of this site has preserved and conserved the place and its surroundings in his dairy farm with well-trained guides. As we were coming out of the caves, four minibuses were parked outside. They were carrying students of Mbarara High school.

A look at the guest book shows how busy the centre is daily as tourists and students all over the world flock here each paying Shs5000 per head for local and double for foreigners.

At the site, there is Amabeere ga nyina mwiru guest house that charges Shs100, 000 per night for two bed rooms and breakfast. This is the only place in Uganda with such caves, natural with stalagmites and stalactites. It was listed among the top physical attractions in Kabarole District’s Tourism Development Plan of 2006.

Bunyoro land

A street in Hoima town. There is still free land in Hoima town that investors can take up. Photo by Felix Basiime

Ban on Bunyoro land titles provokes high emotions

(Feature published in Daily Monitor on February 20, 2012)

On realising that the discovery of oil had resulted in scramble for land, the government decided to put a ban on land titles in Bunyoro sub-region.

BY FELIX BASIIME

Confusion reigns in the oil-rich Albertine Graben as regards a “government moratorium” on land titles.

“Our people when they go to Entebbe (National Lands office) with applications, they are told there is a ban on Bunyoro” says Hoima district chairman, Mr George Bagonza, adding, “This has affected development as people can’t easily use reliable mortgages in banks”.

But things could be about to become much clearer. State minister for Urban Development, Ms Justine Kasule, says her ministry has finalized a program for selected development plans and that it may come into force this year. 

“We have made it stringent. The standards may appear to be so high. When we relax we shall not achieve much” she observed recently in Hoima when she was meeting physical planners from the sub region.

But political leaders in the various local governments, some of whom dispute the existence of the moratorium, may take some convincing.

Kasule says the program will guide land use, settlements and infrastructural developments in the area, which has been proved to have commercially viable oil deposits.

She says besides developing a land use policy, the ministry of lands, housing and urban development has created a department for land use planning and developed national physical planning standards.

A couple of years ago government issued a moratorium on issuing fresh land titles in the sub region following several land wrangles and water fall applications that heaped at land offices in recent times.
 

But the land boards and political leaders of Hoima and Buliisa districts say they have never received any official communication from the ministry on the matter.

“Which law will they use to deny people to title their land? We are functioning normally. We have not yet received any communication to that effect” the Buliisa District land board chairman, Mr Sabiiti Tundulu says.

But Hoima mayor, Ms Mary Mugasa says, “For me I don’t think the government ban is on all Bunyoro land, it came after the people in Bugoma and Kyangwali had encroached on government land, forest reserves, and army land. But some people in Hoima town are still getting titles”.

“Land, this is one thing that the oil industry is going to face as a challenge, land here is owned communally, so no one can sell land, I as the leader of Buliisa sub county, have never received any government circular as regards a ban on land titles” said Mr Kubalirwa Nkuba, the LC III chairman.

It is this scenario that is somehow hampering development in the area as individuals try to strategise themselves in the budding oil industry.

State minister, Ms Kasule says cases of land grabbing and unplanned developments had begun to emerge which prompted government to come up with a directive that will regulate land dealings in oil areas which will be planned under a special program.

Kasule however said district land boards in Bunyoro have ignored the ban and are going ahead to process titles in the prohibited areas.

“I have been told that some people are conniving with members of district land boards and some officials in the lands ministry to process fake titles. Tell whoever is doing this to stop it. Let them not con people because they will turn against them” Kasule told physical planners.

Oil exploration in the sub region has discovered 2.5 billion barrels of oil in place but of this, only 1 million is recoverable. Tullow Oil, the company contracted by government in oil production is at appraisal stage for the oil wells.

The discovery has made some influx of people into this region in search of land, trade and jobs but many won’t do big business if government does not lift the ban soon.

There are people in this sub region who think that the government’s moratorium is useless and ineffective basing on the historical land factors of Bunyoro.

“I think the moratorium is a hoax” says Mr Yolamu Nsamba, the Principal Private Secretary to the King of Bunyoro. He adds, “So much land here is in forests and game reserves, so the ban has no impact”

But the spokesperson for the Lands Ministry, Mr Denis Obo insists that the government’s moratorium is on and is “Not to issue land titles until the rightful indigenous people are registered”

“We are looking for a permanent solution to the Bunyoro land question, so we have suspended issuing of even certificates of customary land, free hold or any other until this is sorted” Obo told this paper last week.

“Some seek Leaseholds while others seek Freeholds titles, ultimately we want to see how the locals can co-exist alongside the oil developers” Obo further explained.

However, this raises some constitutional questions of land ownership in Uganda where the constitution grants a willing buyer and willing seller to settle anywhere in the country.

“The constitution allows any Ugandan to get land anywhere in Uganda, so all this is challenging and we have to seek a legal advice from the Solicitor General to see whether what we are doing is legal” says Mr Obo.

Basing on the fact that the Uganda Constitution Article 244 (2) provides that: “Minerals and mineral ores shall be exploited taking into account the interests of the individual land owners, local governments and the Government”, some individuals may lose out if the land question is not solved early than expected.

Ethnic land conflicts

Bunyoro has been a hot bed of land and ethnic conflicts between Bakiga and Banyoro in Kibaale district, the Bagungu and pastoralists in Buliisa district and lately the Alur and the pastoralists in Kigorobya Sub County in Hoima district.

The parties in Kigorobya are feuding over land demarcations.

“Police has held various meetings with these communities under the community policing program but they have failed to come to a consensus” the Midwestern police spokesperson Ms Zurah Ganyana says. 

The land under dispute is adjacent to Taitai oil well.

Mr Anatoli Kyamanywa, LC I chairman of Runga village, the epicenter of clashes in Kigorobya says 

“There has been increased rush for land by people from all walks of life in areas adjacent to oil sites as perspective landlords anticipate to get royalties when oil is discovered on their land”.

Call for free land titles

There is a call from some sections of people in Bunyoro requesting government to survey and title all land in Bunyoro and offer free land titles to the Banyoro to curb rampant land wrangles that has escalated since the oil discovery in 2006.

Mr Shem Byakagaba, the chairman Kitara Heritage Development Agency says the directive on titles is being done at the detriment of the locals.

“Processing a land title in Uganda costs about Shs 1.5 million, so this halt is not enough, government must move faster and protect the people who can’t afford tittles and should avail tittles to them” reasons Byakagaba.

                                    END 

Bee fences: keeping elephants out, letting high profits in

Bee keeping graduates from Rubirizi district at the periphery of Queen Elizabeth National Park. Photo by Enid Ninsiima 

By Felix Basiime & Enid Ninsiima

Posted  Wednesday, February 8  2012 at  00:00

[http://www.monitor.co.ug/Magazines/Farming/-/689860/1322528/-/12mei3z/-/index.html]

In Summary

They strained to keep elephants away from their crops, but when they looked at the bright side of things, they started earning from the straining.

Like many small-scale farmers, 56-year-old Agnes Ndyomubandi survives on her cotton, cassava, maize and banana gardens.

Unfortunately, her home in Masaka village, Rubirizi District, sits on the periphery of Queen Elizabeth National Park (QENP) – which meant that most of her crops were being destroyed by wild animals.

“For several years, I have lost all my gardens to elephants and baboons from the park. I could not support my family,” she says.

The game park boasts of a high concentration of wildlife, and has been designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. But tourism and heritage aside, the man-wildlife conflict stemming from competition for resources has harmed the livelihoods of many surrounding communities.

During cotton harvest time in Kasese, people spent sleepless nights lighting fires around their gardens to scare away the animals. The method did not work, and some people have even been killedfrom wild lifeattacks.

In Kasese District in 2010, more than 460 farmers unsuccessfully sued Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) in the High court, seeking compensation of more than Shs1.5 b in damages caused by wildlife to the property and crops in the previous year.

The farmers under Ikongo Farmers Marketing and Processing Cooperative Society, alleged that UWA officials were negligent in their gazetting duties, which allowed animals such as elephants to stray from the national park five miles away to destroy their soya beans, maize, pineapples, cotton, groundnuts, mangoes and bananas.

In 2010, the people of Rubirizi District asked government to erect an electric fence around the park. UWA rejecteInnocent Kahwa, the community liaison officer at Volcano Safaris Partnership Trust (VSPT), an NGO that works with community and conservation projects in the area, said they had exhausted their efforts.

“We tried trenches and failed because elephants could cover them with soil. We used gun shooting to scare away the animals it also failed,” Kahwa said. “Now, we have resorted to bee fencing – and so far, so good.”

The elephant conflict mitigation project is a 60-metre fence made up of beehives, treated wood, paint, wires and iron sheets. As initiators and primary funders of the project, VSPT says the project is being piloted in the areas bordering QENP first, as a demonstration to the rest of the farmers in surrounding districts who are also prone to wildlife invasion.

“We have introduced this method to see whether it can work for us and be sustainable,” Kahwa said.
The project was built on elephant and bee research from Save the Elephants – a London-based NGO that explores natural solutions to human-elephant conflicts.

It was founded in 1993 by Dr Iain Douglas-Hamilton who made a pioneering study of elephant behaviour in the late 1960s in Lake Manyara National Park, Tanzania, and has worked on elephant research and against poaching across the continent since. The group’s 2011 report says that in its ongoing monitoring of elephant farm invasions, only one in 32 had successfully penetrated a bee fence.
Money for honey

Some farmers in Uganda have found success with an alternative method around Kibale National Park – they have managed to keep away most elephants by burning red pepper mixed with elephant droppings.

The project, initiated by Tooro Botanical gardens supported by CARE International Uganda, is in Busiriba and Kahungye Sub-counties in Kamwenge District, Kasenda and Ruteete Sub-counties in Kabarole District, and at Karwa Sub-county in Kyenjojo District. Bee fences have added benefits beyond staving off wildlife.

Malaika Honey, a group of beekeeping experts who both employ and train the local community, says bees can actually increase crop yields by up to 30 per cent – potentially worth millions more in profits to existing agriculture ventures.

Protecting Lake Munyanyange

Cows graze near Lake Munyanyange in Kasese. Photo by Felix Basiime 

By Felix Basiime

Posted  Wednesday, February 8  2012 at  00:00

(http://www.monitor.co.ug/artsculture/Travel/-/691238/1322548/-/nkcetd/-/index.html)

In Summary

In a bid to protect the migratory birds that use it as a habitat and to ensure conservation of the crater lake, Lake Munyanyange is going to be fenced off.

As hundreds of tourists every year visit Queen Elizabeth National Park to see wild animals, others visit the salty Lake Katwe to see how people mine different types of natural salt.

But a number of others particularly come to watch and listen to the sweet sounds of birds at Lake Munyanyange, a few metres away from Lake Katwe in Katwe-Kabatooro town council.

“Bird watching is a growing venture in the tourism sector in Uganda and here at Lake Munyanyange, visitors enjoy sporadic musical calls of birds imitating other birds calls,” said Mr Richardson Ouma, a birding specialist and field guide at Katwe Tourist Information Centre (Katic).

Lake Munyanyange attracts birds that migrate from as far as Kenya and Canada among other countries including the White Browed Robbin Chats, Black Headed Gonoleks, Long Tailed Starlings, African Hoopoes, Winding, Zitting, Flamingos and Desert Cisticolas.

Lake Munyanyange is a small seasonal shallow crater lake located to the North East of Katwe town. The lake is an important habitat for migratory birds and has one of the largest concentrations of the lesser black-backed gulls, Larus fuscus and other waders.

These birds are Palearctic migrants arriving in October and departing in April. Thousands of these birds roost at the lake.

Ouma reasons that most birds find Lake Munyanyange most safe for them as at one stage of the year it turns muddy and that makes it difficult for wild animals to wade through the mud and prey on them. During this period, the birds roost in the middle of the lake.

“Most water bird species that migrate from Europe and within Africa, that is to say Palearctic and intra-African migrants, find it the ideal stop-over and roosting area,” says Ouma.

It is this reason that Katic has planned to fence off this lake from other animals like cows, an exercise that will be monitored by Nature Uganda, an NGO.

“We are just waiting for officials from Nature Uganda who will monitor this exercise so that the fencing does not affect the birds’ habitat,” said Ouma.

Martin Kikoni Muhindo, the Katwe-Kabatooro Town Council Clerk says they have committed Shs5m from the council to Katic for mitigations on the environmental threats in the two lakes.

This follows the September 2011 partnership reached by the urban authority and Katic towards management of crater lakes in the town council.

Ouma says about 32 water bird species have been recorded at the lake and during the waterfowl counts of July 2010, a total of 410 birds representing 11 species were recorded.

The fencing of this lake also aims at ensuring the protection and conservation of the crater lake from agricultural encroachment and other potential degradation actions, promoting ecotourism development for sustainable biodiversity conservation, and generating revenue for the council and Katic.

This move has also been supported by Usaid-Star as part of managing wildlife outside protected areas and using ecotourism as an incentive for protecting biodiversity.

Bird watching on Lake Munyanyange has grown as it is a unique sanctuary with varieties and migratory birds such as flamingos and seagulls.

MEDIA COVERAGE IN THE EXCTRACTIVES SECTOR IN UGANDA

REPORTING ON OIL, GAS AND MINING, WORKSHOP “B” KAMPALA,

PANEL DISCCUSSION BY JOURNALISTS AND CSO’s ON THE ISSUES ON THE EXTRACTIVE SECTOR IN UGANDA, on February 2, 2012 at ACME.

This was my take on the theme below:

THEME:  Sector coverage since May 2011. What has changed from when we last met in May 2011—how special oil debate was covered, how coverage ought to be like during Bills debate (what to look out for), and coverage of farm down.

What has changed?

Most media houses have given more attention to the coverage of the sector and some are contemplating of starting an oil news desk.

The media has made Ugandans keener about the oil issues and therefore any news related to oil is given more attention by the public than before.

Coverage of the sector is no longer presumed as business news only but as a multidimensional, could be political, environment etc.

More journalists been interested to report on this sector but few have been trained.

How the debate was covered

The debate was a land mark in the history of the Uganda parliament that had to stretch sessions beyond normal time.

Oil debate dominated news in all media in Uganda. The debates were sparked by the secret oil-sharing agreements between government and Tullow Oil and the alleged bribery to some government officials by Tullow Oil, which it denied.

However, the debate did not only stretch the MPs alone but also the journalists and the media houses because they were compelled to discuss matters that they were new to them and not fully conversant with.

I wish also to observe that at some level, the media was bent on assumptions that the accused officials had really taken oil bribes and this picture to some extent was relayed to the public, (the viewers, listeners and readers).

The media to some extent failed on its role to give readers, viewers and listeners an informed position beyond what was discussed on the floor of parliament.

The accused ministers were not given fair coverage in the media only some few media houses tried to seek them outside parliament.

On this, the Media also failed to explain to the general reader, listener and viewer what the oil agreements are and mean to them now and in future.

The media also failed to contextualize the oil value chain from Upstream to downstream at the time of the debate so that an average Ugandan can know exactly at what stage the production has reached.

The media did not show which countries had published or not published their oil agreements in comparison to the Ugandan situation.

How coverage ought to be like during Bills debate (what to look out for)

Here we anticipate a hotter debate than last year because, the Bills; Resource Management Bill, Revenue Management Bill and Value Addition Management Bill are to set the laws on how the sector will be managed for more than 30 years.

And this calls for Media’s strategy to look out on how government plans to go about the resources and the revenues and who benefits in the value chain.

Media should look out for any clauses in the Bills that are ambiguous.

Coverage of farm down

The formal go-ahead for Tullow Oil to farm-down part of its Ugandan asset portfolio to its international partners, Total and CNOOC, has been slowed by the president objecting to part of the deal.

What this means has not yet been fully explained by the media since last September.

What this means to the country, to the oil companies and to the local person has not yet fully explained by the media.

Only Daily Monitor last week tried in an article on who loses or gains in this.

In Conclusion

A lot has to be done in training and strategy by the Media in Uganda to the coverage of the extractive sector. As journalists we must form networks/ parternerships with CSOs and other key players in this sector to be able to do better our work.

I personally, have been networking with Kabarole Research and Resource Centre (KRC) and Katwe Tourism Information Centre (KATIC) among others on extractives and other issues in the Western region.