Progress 'undermines African cultures'

Dik dik: Bush meat has become a major conservation issue
Image by IUCN Mozambique

By Alex Kirby BBC News Online environment correspondent, in Nairobi

Two African scientists say the Christian churches bear some responsibility for the growing consumption of bush meat.

The churches should have to negotiate with African communities about the positive aspects of their religions. It should be an open discussion

Chris Opondo

They say the churches' efforts to change traditional African beliefs have eroded taboos which helped to protect many species.

Bush meat has now become a major conservation issue.

The researchers want the churches to be more open and less dogmatic in their approach to traditional practices.

They also say tourists need to be sensitive to their effect on African culture. The two are Chris Opondo, an anthropologist, and Dr Ann Stroud, a systems agronomist, both of the African Highlands Initiative (AHI).

Both are themselves Christians. Mr Opondo is researching cultural changes in the mountainous Kigezi region of south-west Uganda.

Old ways

He told a conference here, the Africa Mountains High Summit, hosted by the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep): "Clans in the highlands and many parts of Africa had totems.

"Some of the totems in Kigezi clans prevent people from eating bushbucks, cattle with dark stripes, and even monkey flesh.

"However, game meat is currently being promoted.

"These practices are new, especially to those communities that did not eat meat and had taboos about them.

"Christianity has discouraged the ancestral rituals that were performed in the mountain forests to a peace god."

To the brink

Dr Stroud told BBC News Online: "There are restaurants in Nairobi where you can find not only crocodile and zebra meat, but species like impala and eland.

"Most of it is ranched, but when people in places like Kigezi start hearing that game meat is saleable in the outside world, that changes their mindset."

Once taboo and totem species such as zebra and hippo are now taken for their meat

Bush meat consumption is a growing problem in parts of West Africa, where it is believed to be driving some species, especially apes, to dangerously low levels.

Both researchers, though, say Christianity is still tending to undermine traditional African ways of life. Mr Opondo told BBC News Online: "The missionaries came to 'civilise' the Africans, to end their 'barbaric, satanic' rituals.

"That is continuing - even today they are still discouraging our traditions."

Perception of superiority

An Ethiopian farmer AHI knows was recently told by the church to get rid of his second wife, who was pregnant. Mr Opondo said: "The churches should have to negotiate with African communities about the positive aspects of their religions. It should be an open discussion."

Tourists who come to enjoy the mountains trigger change among the inhabitants, leading to assimilation of cultures and the diffusion of new lifestyles

Chris Opondo

Dr Stroud said: "There are other ways of promoting religious principles without being dogmatic. I can foresee a negotiation to that sort of discussion which would end with the churches accepting polygamy or other traditional practices that are part of the culture."

Mr Opondo told the conference that tourism was effecting huge changes in the lives of people in the Kigezi highlands.

He said: "The tourists who come to enjoy the mountains trigger change among the inhabitants, leading to assimilation of cultures and the diffusion of new lifestyles.

"The prevailing attitude of using Western culture as the mirror of what is good has modified cultural norms. Those working in the tourism sector enjoy high esteem in their communities.

"They copy European accents, hairstyles and dress. The perception that Western culture is superior is dominant."

African confidence

He told BBC News Online: "People see Europeans as more prestigious. They think: 'You want to talk like a white man'.

"In Kenya tourism is second only to agriculture as the country's biggest foreign currency earner, so it's hugely important to East Africa.

"What we want is for tourists to recognise that the mountains don't just offer wildlife and stunning scenery: people's culture matters, too.

"There are cultural sites and villages being set up where tourists can go and see beer being brewed from bananas, and people farming in the traditional way with hoes.

"Some of them have never seen anything like that. People in Africa have all sorts of fantasies about the technologies in Europe, but they've got to have confidence in themselves if they're to retain their identity."