Beyond cash
It is not only cash that motivates local people. They are not, actually, money-minded.
Like people everywhere, they enjoy socializing, especially having a good laugh at each
others’ expense, and they talk about anything and everything. They are interested in their
children’s education and we have been able to provide scholarships for a number of
local children to continue at school into the sixth form.^82 People are very concerned
about the security of their crops on which they depend for life and health; the live-traps
(see Chapter 9) we have introduced have been a qualified success. Local people are
much concerned with access to clean water: we have been able to help them by reno-
vating local wells and boreholes.^83 Having cut down many of the local trees, people are
now interested in supplies of firewood and wood for building; as a result, through our
education programme,^84 they have taken up a longer perspective and embraced the idea
of planting trees. Tree-planting was also one of the five topics selected for our Workshop
in March 2001. Another was bee-keeping, and we now have a nucleus of bee-keepers in
the surrounding villages. In such ways we hope to win friends and gain credibility when
we tell people that they should not harm the forest and its chimpanzees.
On the question of forest management, it is clear that there is still a lot of groundwork
to be done by the Forest Department^85 before participatory management schemes invol-
ving local people as managers can be expected to succeed. The locals are primarily inter-
ested in benefits for themselves, either immediate or in the future, but definite. They are
used to an official economy and a ‘black’ economy where activities are illegal; they need
to know that the official economy can function, that wages will be paid on time, that job
security is a real prospect and that money, once received, can be kept safely until needed.
This last point was brought home to me not long ago when I discussed with a man who
had received some money what he should do with it. I suggested he put it in the local
bank in Masindi but he dismissed the idea. When I asked why, he said that all the people
who had put money in the bank before Amin’s time had lost it. He was absolutely con-
vinced that if he put it in the bank he would lose it. The short-termism this attitude engen-
ders is basic to many aspects of life for Ugandan wage earners: they rapidly turn money
into goods and services rather than hold on to it for fear of losing it in any number of
ways. One of the topics that we discussed at our farmers’ Workshop was micro-finance:
how to hold on to and manage money. This kind of basic training is not widely available
in up-country Uganda and is much needed. In the meantime, people still deal in very
small sums of money and most trade continues to take place either in small shops selling
items such as matches, cigarettes, soap and candles, or in traditional markets (Fig. 10.3):
enjoyable, colourful places that provide a social meeting place but have little if any
connection with the wider urban economy in which people can really improve their
standard of living and become what has sometimes been called Uganda’s middle class.
Beyond cash 203(^82) Grateful thanks to Cleveland Zoological Society which generously made these funds available.
(^83) Funds for this were provided by Makerere University Faculty of Forestry through a grant from NORAD,
part of which comes to BFP.
(^84) Thanks to funding provided by JGI-Uganda.
(^85) Reconstituted, in 2003, as the National Forest Authority.