A Walk to the Bush: Refugee Side

A refugee participant passes through a river to carry firewood home

Greetings to all, and I hope that you are well!

Recently rains here in Imvepi have been steadily increasing, and most days we can expect a decent thundershower. This is excellent for agricultural production and hosts and refugees alike all over the settlement can be seen out cultivating land and planting annual crops (primarily sorghum, cassava, maize, groundnuts, and sesame). Rains have also helped to cool temperatures and sometimes the air can feel a bit chilly at night, which is welcome relief. It is remarkable how the entire settlement has suddenly become quite green in appearance and the soil looking dark and fertile, as opposed to it's dry, caked appearance when I first arrived last month. Rains also are a challenge for fieldwork, however, as they occur suddenly. Out of nowhere the sky turns dark, winds pick up, and there is a downpour. There are few places to take shelter out in the settlement, so twice this week our team needed to end interviews early or cancel firewood collection walks and zip back home on the motorcycle. All part of the process.

Greening agricultural land in Imvepi

In the next blog posts I will take you through two firewood collection transect walks: this post on the refugee side, and next time on the host side. For this post I chose a walk from this past Monday, which was an arduous day. Between just two refugee participants, we walked a total of 16 miles to collect firewood. Both participants were located in Village 12 on the northwest side of Imvepi, and one of my preliminary research findings is that firewood access is very much tied to which part of the settlement a refugee is located, with Village 10-12 residents so far at the greatest disadvantage given the sheer distance refugees need to travel simply to exit the settlement and then find safe access to firewood trees in surrounding woodlands and bushy areas.

The particular participant I will introduce for this blog (referred to by the pseudonym "Jane") is a South Sudanese refugee in her mid-20's who is raising several small children in Imvepi, where she has lived since 2017. To supplement meager food rations distributed by the World Food Program, Jane does agricultural work every week for a local host landlord, which in part helps her to rent a piece of his land for growing sorghum and maize. The remaining rental costs she covers by purchasing groundnuts and grinding them by hand with large stones into a paste to sell at market. Although it is common for refugees to collect firewood from their rental land, Jane noted that there is no firewood surrounding her rental land so we walked in a completely different direction in order to find firewood.

We covered a total of 8.61 miles on this firewood collection walk, and the walk took a total of 4.5 hours. Along the way, I collect points indicating rocky hills, rivers, rest spots, places where edible plants are harvested, areas where firewood is not collected for fear of inciting conflict with local hosts, and areas where firewood is harvested. We (myself, translator/assistant Josephine, and Jane) left Jane's home shortly after noon. Jane grabbed her panga, or machete for cutting firewood, and long strips of cloth to tie up firewood bundles. As I mentioned previously, Village 12 is very much in a central part of Imvepi and we walked 1.5 miles to simply reach the edge of refugee dwellings. This part of Imvepi has many steep slopes and rocky hills, which were the first features I marked as we began walking.

Rocky slopes in Village 12, Imvepi

After exiting the clustered refugee plots, we entered an area of bushland with some small tree stems scattered beneath a few large shea nut trees. When I probed about the potential for collecting firewood in this area, Jane informed me that this is an area where refugees are regularly chased by the landlord if they are caught trying to cut firewood. As we moved into this bushy land, however, the participants started to collect a wild, edible plant products. They collected two types of edible greens: dodo, or red amaranth (Amaranthus cruentus), and red pepper leaves (Capsicum annuum). They also collected the heavy fruits of Borassus palm (Borassus aethiopium). I will likely write an entire post about Borassus palm because it is such an amazing and multifunctional species. The fruits are opened by throwing them against stones, and are filled with sweet fiber which can be chewed or boiled as a sweetener with porridge. Jane informed me that sometimes she sells red pepper and dodo greens at market, though usually she collects them just for home consumption.

Dodo, or red amaranth greens

Next we reached a muddy river, where we encountered a man cleaning his bicycle. The river was knee deep so Josephine and I removed shoes and socks, though Jane walked right through with her plastic sandals. Here we encountered a friend of Jane's, another refugee, who tagged along with us for part of the walk, also looking for firewood. By this point, we were walking through flat, open agricultural fields which are largely rented to refugees by host landlords. This is a challenging area for firewood collection because most land has been cleared. Another preliminary finding of my research is that firewood removal is highly synergistic with the expansion of agricultural production in areas surrounding Imvepi, as Imvepi's growing refugee population copes with reduced food aid.

Crossing the river

We kept walking in search of some kind of wooded area, but by mile four had failed to find anything. As we walked, suddenly a host called out to us from his home a short distance away. He was displeased that we were moving nearby his land in search of firewood. In Arabic he yelled at us: "Who gave you permission to collect firewood there?" Arabic is one language in which hosts and refugees can sometimes communicate, though often with some difficulty as not many hosts are fluent. Other times they try to communicate in English or Swahili, but these languages are weaker among the refugees, who mostly speak Kakwa and Arabic. Intimidated, Jane decided to turn around and walk in a new direction. Examining the map, I learned that by this point we had actually travelled into a whole separate refugee settlement, Bidibidi. We walked on and on through agricultural fields with little firewood available.

Asking permission at the home of a host to cut firewood

Frustrated, Jane finally stopped and decided to try and find the home of a host whom she could pointedly ask for permission to cut firewood. As Josephine and I hung back, she walked up to a host compound where they gave her both permission to cut some Acacia stems, as well as a juicy piece of papaya to eat. This demonstrates that each host has a different perspective and attitude towards refugee firewood collection. Jane cut firewood with her panga for a good 20-30 minutes, collecting a sizable bundle of wet, fresh tree stems, weighing a staggering 59.8 pounds in total. This fresh, wet wood will need to sit for a full week before it is dry enough to use for cooking food.

Packing a firewood bundle

We turned around and set off on the four mile journey back to Jane's home, back across the river and climbing/descending the steep Imvepi slopes. We stopped near a small waterfall to rest, drink water, and Jane finished eating her piece of papaya which had been carefully tucked on top of her firewood bundle. My limited experience carrying even small firewood bundles is that the weight presses sharply and uncomfortably into the head and neck. Carrying a full 60 pound bundle across four miles of steep and uneven terrain is truly an unthinkable human feat. By the time we finally returned to Jane's home, she had sweat pouring down her face and even those of us not carrying firewood were entirely spent. And she looks for firewood 2-3 times per week, with each bundle cooking about six meals.

Taking rest on the way home

The final haul: 60 pounds of firewood, wild greens, and Borassus palm fruits

Although extreme, this firewood collection experience is not unusual among refugees in Villages 10-12 of Imvepi, based on the 15 firewood collection walks we conducted in those villages. The full extent of this firewood collection burden among refugees in Uganda has not been adequately quantified, nor the nuanced challenges qualitatively understood. Our intention is to share this data with a variety of humanitarian organizations to improve policies and programs for equitable, safe, and sustainable access to cooking energy in Imvepi and other Ugandan refugee settlements.

Thanks for reading and I look forward to sharing again soon.