............ Trekking to Congo in search of Firewood

 

By Gerald Tenywa

 

WHENEVER 25-year-old Michael Adriko crosses the border from the Democratic Republic of Congo with a bicycle loaded with firewood, he helps several residents in Arua town put food on the table.

“In DR Congo, they do not buy firewood. So we bring it to Arua,” says Adriko.
“I come to Uganda only twice a week, but return to DR Congo with handsome gains from selling firewood.”

Adriko spends about six hours riding his bicycle to the north-western border town of Arua, but the firewood gets finished within less than one hour.

“It sells like hot cake. The only hardship is getting to this place,” he says.
The New Vision caught up with Adriko in the outskirts of Arua during his last stop over to the land where anything including firewood and charcoal goes for money.

“I cut trees from the forest and because it is in plenty there is no market in DR Congo,” he says.

Following his discovery two years ago that there was money in firewood, Adriko has been selling it in Arua twice a week. He, however, intends to ferry firewood to Arua more often.

Michael Adriko rides from DR Congo twice a week to bring

firewood to Arua in Uganda

 

Not everybody in Arua town and the surrounding villages has money to buy firewood from Adriko and his colleagues. So, women and children have to brave the hot sun and trek deep into DR Congo looking for it.

“It takes a long time, sometimes even a day to fetch firewood,” says Joyce Chandiru, a resident of Nyai village. She says it is risky at times because people get caught for stepping into border of DRCongo.

Cornelius Avujoa, the LC1 chairperson for Nyai village, says his locality has only tiny pieces of firewood and that it has become a problem to cook for large numbers of people particularly during funeral rites. While people used to camp for days making local brew and cooking food, the funeral ceremonies are being reduced to a few days because of scarcity of firewood and charcoal.

Ironically, parts of Uganda, which still produce charcoal such as Madi, instead export it to Sudan.

“It is strange that places that should not be harvesting trees for charcoal are cutting them down for export,” says the LC1 chief. “Government should intervene because grassroots communities are helpless.”

In a separate interview, Margaret Akello who makes stoves and improved fire places blames the scarcity of firewood on tobacco curing, which consumes a lot of firewood.

“There is a lot of suffering because when you travel to some areas, you do not see any tree,” she says.

In addition to processing of trees into charcoal for export to Sudan and tobacco curing, brick making has also created a lot of havoc to the tree cover. This demands large trees that are cut down in order to burn the bricks.

“I do not understand this kind of development that destroys the environment and then people suffer because they cannot cook food,” says Akello.

“There is need to create awareness because the way things are happening is like giving an open invitation to desertification,” she adds.

Initially, Akello was doing petty business when she accepted to become a mobiliser for local people to take up technologies promoted by the Ministry of Energy with funding by GTZ, a German development agency.

“I found the work interesting and later benefited from training that empowered me with skills to make energy-saving stoves,” says Akello.

“We make stoves and the prices can be as low as sh10,000. People are interested in better stoves because they live with the problem of firewood scarcity,” she adds.

Turn to Page 37 Arua districts is also providing tree seedlings, says Akello in order to replace the trees being felled down.

 

However, this is like a drop in the sea given that too many trees are falling down. Akello’s organisation, Participatory Rural Initiative to save Energy and Environment, which she coordinates is the pillar for creating partnership with the district and development agencies.

Testimonies of people like Joyce Chandiru, a resident of Nyai village indicates that simple technologies like stoves can change lives of poor people.

Joyce Chandiru uses a portable improved stove to cook

 

“There used to be a lot of smoke in the kitchen, which would cause tears to run down my cheeks,” she says. “Cooking food was not easy and because of this men would quarrel with their wives.”

She adds: “When we got the energy saving stoves even men cook the food and no longer wait for the women to come back home.”

Chandiru says this will probably change the longstanding belief that cooking is a chore for women.

“The women brought our fathers in a different environment,” she says. “The children growing up today have a different experience so it is not strange for them to cook,” she points out.

As we drove out of Nyai village we saw expanses of cassava and dried maize stalks, which Akello insisted should not be touched because the owners waiting for them to dry could easily drag trespassers to LC courts.