Dear friend, Its been long since I heard from you. I hope you are doing well. I came back to the office this morning from tourist guides training excercise that I started in Feb this year. The first course I conducted was a beginers guides course in Uganda, then went to Rwanda Nyungwe forest for a 3 and half weeks bird guides course, came back to south western Uganda to conduct a course of Cultural tourist guides, and ended up in Kampala to offer a 10days course for Senior guides. I love to do this with passion, with hope that our people can be involved in the tourism activities professionally and earn something to support their families. Iam also interested in the improved and better standards of guiding services in the Region.
As a self made guide and a birder, I also still feel there is need to support women education. I thought about this for quite sometime, until I decided to start something. I appreciate my mother’s role in upbringing me. She really worked hard to ensure that I go to school. Of course my home, just outside Queen Elizabeth National Park, Rutoto is a very poor and hopeless village. But my mother would rather spend a whole day distilling a local gin ( waragi) and sell it to ensure that I go to school. This however stopped at the age of 9. My uncle helped me for one year and later dropped me. Life became a challenge. I took me 33 years to get a degree in tourism. Iam soon starting putting down notes of my life in my book ” The journey from Rutoto to Los Angeles” . I feel mothers do a great job in this world. In Africa we have challenges of culture, religions, and customs. Sometimes women are not given a chance to go to school especially at a young and tender stage, on sill reason that they will get married and go away to live in other families. Also some of our cultures regard women as a source of wealth, because when they get married, dowry is paid either money or materials especially cows, goats, etc.
I know I wont do much, but this project will make some contribution to the society. Visit it may be you will have some interest. I will appreciate any contributions in ideas, materials, sponsorships, or anything that will help our young girls. Even a sentence of an idea means a lot to this project.
http://birdugandacom-ugandabirder.blogspot.com/
Thank you for visiting my blog.
It’s intriguing seeing the responses to Herbert and comparing them with the responses, over the years, to the efforts of myself and my semi-traditional relatives to set up a little tourism project in Arnhem Land. In some ways Herbert and I had similar aims. The negative responses went even further.
I’ll be talking about some aspects of this, the Baby Dreaming Project, at the Wildlife Tourism Australia workshop to be held in mid-May in Currumbin, Qld. The title of my presentation is “The Baby Dreaming Project: the Snake as Sister/ Interpretation the Indigenous way”.
And Peter Shute, some will view the term “using wildlife” as “unfortunate”. Let me discuss this in the context of my presentation.
Snakes are an attraction for visitors and so you could say that guides and wildlife parks etc, ‘use’ them. As do presenters in wildlife television. This ‘use’ is a world away from the way my relatives and I see snakes.
There are dangerous snakes at Baby Dreaming. But my daughter’s grandmother named Amber after one such snake, a python, to protect her from unscrupulous men (Kunwinjku men are particularly scared of this creature). A large venomous species is known as the Bringer of Order in the Dreamtime.
My children have Python Dreaming, and Rowan, my son, seeing a dying python cried, seeing her not just as the unfortunate victim of a speeding vehicle, but as his sister, dying.
By the same token I can hunt snakes with my family because I do not have snake dreaming. However, I won’t harm or even eat Estuarine Crocodile because it is my dreaming. The NT Administrator, Sally Thomas, can attest to how far this goes. Once while we were featuring in a documentary on crocodiles, we needed to paddle a canoe out into the mangroves. Sally, on seeing a tomahawk lying on the floor, asked me why it was there. I told her that if we were attacked by a crocodile she needed to hit it on the head with the axe. Reasonably she asked why I couldn’t do the deed. I replied that if we were attacked the most I could do was ask the crocodile ‘politely’ to leave us alone.
This is a world away from the one dimensional view of wildlife usually presented for public consumption, and from the attitude I’ve encountered while working on documentaries for the BBC, CNN and so forth where the occasional presenter likes to seize wild reptiles because he “loves” them.
I’m presenting this alternative view at the workshop because I think it’s important. As a guide and researcher I’m aware that many birders watch birds because they seek a connection with wildlife. And many of my clients, including that American writer, Jonathon Franzen, who came to Arnhem Land with me, have more in common with my relatives’ attitude than the rest of wildlife consumers, in that they lack that ‘top-down’ attitude that the term ‘using’ implies.
So I am ‘using’ the workshop in yet another attempt to change attitude. But as I’m sure Herbert and other presenters will attest, it’s one hell of an uphill battle.
For those who came in late … or too early … here is Herbert.
The Executive Committee of the Uganda Young birders Club;
The Executive Committee of the Uganda Young birders Club .jpg
Herbert,
Please get in touch if you are going to PAOC in Arusha, – we could do a field guide training / ethnoorn session/presentation maybe?
Have fun in Australia – we really are a nice bunch – and see you in TZ!?
Cheers and best,
Bob
Good, thanks for that. It’s very hard to tell these days.
Peter Shute
Hi Graham, My company is Bird Uganda Safaris LTD and my domain name is http://www.birduganda.com . Iam actually presenting a paper at the Birdlife Australia Conference.
Have a nice day
Herbert
I second that.
I am looking forward to catching up with Herbert and the many hundreds of other scientists, ethnoornithologists, birders, bird guiders and much more in Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya and the rest of that great continent at the Pan-African Ornithological Congress in Arusha, Tanzania in October this year.
See more for yourself here: http://www.paoc-africa.org/
Best,
Bob
Just to set the record straight, Herbert is a genuine bird-guide, he is the managing-director of the respected “BirdUganda” and not a ‘spammer’ by nature. I believe his appeal is a genuine request to advance the lives of female Ugandans who are very under-privileged. I’m sure there are a few B-A readers who have used his services and can also vouch for his veracity.
Tom
Herbert is the genuine article.
Dear Herbert,
How many millions do you want? I have friends at The World Government (led By CIA informant Clive Palmer) and if you deposit A$100 million into BSA 012341 Ac 209090978, then you are every naive.
Best,
Friend.
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I was going to reject this a spam, but it sort of looks genuine. For some reason a Reply All to it doesn’t include the list, don’t know what’s going on there.
Actually, looking at the website, I think it’s birding spam, should have read it properly.
Peter Shute