while activities such as cultivating are no longer perceived as ‘work’. High status goes
with of having a ‘job’ and earning money (see also Parkin 1979).
The people of Nyabyeya are a diverse community of people from three countries and
many tribes who have settled near the forest for a number of reasons all having some-
thing to do with the possibility (though for many not the reality) of earning cash. There
is the remote chance that the sawmill will open again, with jobs. There is the (more real-
istic) chance of getting work in pitsawing, which employs men and women to fell and
saw trees into 1-in. thick planks 4.2 m (14 ft) long, carry out the timber to waiting
trucks, and drive the trucks to Kampala (on the mahogany industry, legal and illegal, see
Singer 2002 — an exposé of the mismanagement of Budongo Forest in the 1990s).
Some money has been made in the past from the sale of rattan (Calamus deëratus) col-
lected in the forest, and we have already mentioned furniture-making by people with
carpentry skills. There are two nascent eco-tourism projects that employ guides and
campsite managers, but each is rather far away. The sugar cane works at Kinyara, 7 km
away, is nowadays the best hope of men in Nyabyeya for employment.
However, there is not enough work for the large number of people living in
Nyabyeya. Many of them arrived at the time the sawmill was employing hundreds of
workers; they settled, married and had families. Today they regard Nyabyeya as home
and do not plan to leave to go back to their native villages. As they have no work they
live off the land as agriculturalists but should not be mistaken for traditional subsistence
agriculturalists: they would leave very quickly if a real job paying cash became available
somewhere else. They are migrant labourers. And these are the people laying snares in
the forest, unless they are afraid to enter it.
Fear of the forest
Local people make use of forest materials as described by Johnson (1993), but not all
of them are at home in the forest. Lauridsen (1999: 52) describes how women in
particular tend to fear the forest. One informant told her ‘God has given the
forest strength, many different tribes get lost and die in the forest, people get killed when
they enter, maybe by wild animals, maybe by something else.’ There is fear of snakes
and evil spirits, and women often enter the forest in groups to collect firewood. Even
pitsawyers fear the forest. ‘They will smear a special paste,riji, on their arms, which
will help keep tree spirits from bothering them while cutting trees in the forest.’ Some
such beliefs were quite well established even before the migrants arrived, for example:
‘It seems that since the early days of the sawmill, and perhaps even earlier for the
Banyoro, there has been a strong belief that the Mulimbitree (Bombax reflexum) walks
and talks at night and brings trouble.’Mulimbi(the Lunyoro word) is described by
Eggeling (1940b) as ‘an uncommon forest tree’ with bright red flowers. Such beliefs
help us understand the complex relationship between people and the forest, but we
should not over-emphasize these fears; the sheer number of snares laid daily in the forest
shows that many people are willing to take any necessary risks in the search for wild
animal meat.
Fear of the forest 201