You might not believe it but it was elephants – or what comes out the back end of them – that first brought me to Uganda.
Colleagues back in London laughed out loud when I told them about the first project that the Uganda Conservation Foundation had planned for me: collecting elephant dung, all part of a project aimed at stopping ivory poaching.
“No shit?”
As it turned out, some other lucky bugger got this job, not the muzungu. Several weeks bouncing around in a 4 x 4 looking for elusive elephants may not have been quite as glamorous as I first thought anyway …
Regardless, the muzungu has a soft spot for elephant dung (yes, I know ‘I have issues’) so I was delighted to be invited back to Ishasha, south western Uganda to check out a new conservation turned community tourism project.
Community tourism, elephant conservation, a chance to meet the farmers, managing ‘human wildlife conflict’ – this very cool project ticks all the right boxes for me.
Sun rises over the fields of Ishasha, south western Uganda. Deo sleeps in this hut every night, on the look-out for elephants. Here he's holding a lump of elephant dung (and a panga machete)
Deo was full of smiles and runs a great farm. This charming little girl is one of his daughters.
After two and a half years fundraising to protect farmers such as Deo and his family from crop raiding elephants, it was quite an honor to be invited to tour his farm in Ishasha, bordering Queen Elizabeth National Park, and to make suggestions for how Wild Frontiers Safaris Uganda can help him develop his project, for tourists and community benefit alike.
Here Deo burns a combination of elephant dung and homegrown chilli as a deterrent to would-be elephant encroachers.
Here Deo burns a combination of elephant dung and homegrown chilli as a deterrent to would-be elephant encroachers