Community tourism :
For the purposes of this information, the term pygmy will be used to refer to the indigenous people living in the tropical rainforests of Central Africa are widely dispersed and identify their groups with a variety of names denotes to the ancient dwellers of the forest. The Bwindi Impenetrable Forest located in South Western Uganda adjoining the Democratic Republic of Congo is home to and incredible array of mammals, birds and plant life and with its boundaries lays one half of the worlds population of mountain gorillas. Along with this perfusion of wildlife the forest also contained an indigenous people - the pygmies.
Today they still carry on this trend but have been displaced from their original homes to surrounding villages. They bear no malice but a few to those who removed them from their ancestral home and they retain a very intact sense of community and a surprising lack of interest in personal gain so prevalent in the western world.
The first records of pygmies were made by the Egyptians over 4000 years ago. They described short stature people living near the Mountains of the Moon in present day Western Uganda they traditionally displayed ability as dancers and story tellers.
They survive by hunting small game using poison tipped arrows or nets and gathering various plants and fruit that the forest naturally supplies. Small temporary huts constructed with leaves and branches serve as their dwellings, which are abandoned after a few months when they relocate to another part of the forest in search of fresh supplies of food their tools remarkably remain pre-stone age. They use sharpened sticks for digging and cutting and arrow tips are just fire-hardened sharpened wood. Occasionally they utilize an iron knife for slashing the underbrush. Until recently these people seem to exist in this exotic forest much as they have for the last thousands of years.
A tour going to their present day dwellings can be organized on request once you are a resident at Heritage Lodge-Ha’Buharo Island on Lake Bunyonyi or at Muko Camp site. They are a rare people who in the future might soon seize to exist.