Joyce Orishaba is one of 13 winners in The New York Times 100-word Personal Narrative Contest
When Joyce Orishaba was 6, her life could not have been more different than it is now.
The students — all teenagers — wrote about big and small moments in their lives. Some were heartwarming. Others were funny. Orishaba said she decided to write about this moment to introduce people to her indigenous Batwa tribe, which was removed from its homeland in the rainforest to create a preserve for mountain gorillas.
Narrowing down what she wanted to say to just 100 words was a challenge, Orishaba said. It took her a few days and many rewrites. She consulted with teachers, her mother and grandparents before the final version was completed a couple months ago. “I know her past is not what most Americans go through,” Nicole said. “She has overcome a lot, including language barriers.”
“They were blaming my people, saying we were killing and eating them. But we do not eat gorilla,” she said.In 1991 Orishaba’s tribe was dispersed and placed in villages in Uganda, the Congo and Rwanda. Her home village is in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in Uganda.Tourism is big in the region, but that money doesn’t trickle down to the Batwa.
In 2017 Orishaba was adopted by Nicole, founder and director of the Redemption Song Foundation Uganda, an organization that has worked with the tribe to build permanent homes instead of tepees, on a clean water project and education for children. Her village has about 55 residents, with more than half of them children. The average lifespan is 27.
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