THE WILD, WILD
WORLD OF UGANDA
Tell us a little about yourself ing active community participation
in eco-friendly activities that will
and instinct safaris.
I Am Rabani Turysingura a Ugan-
dan by birth, in the small village of
Nombe.
I currently consider myself very
lucky to have attained the high-
est academic qualification in the
whole family. Farming was once
the only activity to support the
family in providing food locally
grown and directly harvested from
the family gardens.
We were closer to the wildlife con-
servation area of course I can’t fail
to mention that my brothers and
sisters spent most of their time
in the fields scaring wild animals
away from the garden as they do
cross the forest boundary to raid
our crops in the village.
Hunting was rampant in the region
as a sport and for fun, our family
conservation mission was inherit-
ed from my parents, they encour-
aged us to only scare the animals
away not to kill them. This involved
things like lighting fires around the
garden, making noise, drumming
the trees etc. This was fun for us
and it’s unfortunate that they don’t
exist currently. These practices
were replaced with ranger wildlife
patrolling activities.
I was able to proceed on with my
studies and my brothers and sisters
would cultivate the crops to get
food for the family while selling the
rest to pay for school tuition.
After graduating as a primary
teacher in 2006, I taught for two
years before going for further stud-
ies in environmental management.
After my courses ended I concen-
trated on the need for responsible
eco-tourism in my home region,
this was because Mountain gorilla
tourism had already begun in the
region .
be tapped into the ongoing busi-
ness to generate individual profits
for house hold income. I was the
programmes administrator with a
local community based organisa-
tion known as Nkuringo cultural
Centre, the more I was exposed to
this community and other stake
holders in tourism, the more I was
shocked to learn how the tourism
trade was being conducted. It was
concluded that tourism only as a
form of business is quite dangerous
to community values and wildlife
conservation, a strong reason why
we advocated for active, responsi-
ble and informed eco-tourism. To-
gether with local members in my
team and two German volunteers
under GIZ we moved from house
to house, lodge to lodge talking to
hoteliers and other stake holders in
the tourism fraternity about our re-
sponsible eco-tourism campaign.
It was unfortunate that more than
80% of the stake holders were una-
ble to consider our points to make
sense and didn’t respond with pos-
itive remedies as aimed for the sake
of the community and wildlife.
After one year of working together
promoting walking eco-safaris in
the Virunga massif between Mga-
hinga gorilla national park and
Bwindi impenetrable forest, we re-
solved to have our ideas effectively
extended for other regions to ben-
efit and be communicated to the
rest members on the global scale.
This was done through launching
our website online in 2011 and ex-
tending our daily guided eco-tours
itinerary to Rwanda and D.R.Congo
through the current Instinct safaris
platform.
In 2010 I headed a campaign to re-
store the lost shades of the Virunga
massif through afforestation of the
indigenous trees while encourag-
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