The Living Memory of Place: Forest, Childhood, and the Health of a Displaced People
- Guest Writer
- Aug 17
- 5 min read
By Patrick Hans Mulindwa
“The forest remembers us,” Francis says, eyes fixed on the distant canopy. “The question is whether our children will remember the forest.”
In Yatui village, on the slopes of Mount Elgon in Eastern Uganda, a child plays with an improvised slingshot, unaware of how close his life runs parallel to a vanishing world. The Mosopisyek, an Indigenous community descended from the Kalenjin people, once raised their children within the forest itself. There, trees were not only shelter but instruction. Caves held sacred silences, streams carried stories, and the forest floor was a living classroom. But that was before conservation became exclusion.
Francis Barbel, among the last generation born inside the forest before evictions in the 1990s and early 2000s, now teaches the younger generations how to craft beehives, look for herbs and what seasons are best for growing certain crops, all in a bid to pass on his knowledge. The materials have changed, plastic sheeting replacing forest vines, metal wire instead of bark rope, but the intention remains: to pass on a way of life, even in exile.
“The forest was our teacher,” Francis says. “Every sound, every scent, every season had something to show us. Now we must remember the trees.”
The Forest as Physician and Teacher
Francis Barbel, among the last generation born inside the forest before evictions in the 1990s and early 2000s, remembers when child health began with the soil beneath their feet. Mosopisyek children drank milk from forest-grazed cows that licked natural salt from caves, milk believed to ease hypertension and inflammation. They foraged herbs guided by elders who could distinguish between dozens of species, learning that certain leaves treated stomach ailments while some barks fought fevers.
“Every plant had its season, its purpose,” Francis explains. “Children learned medicine by watching their grandmothers, by tasting, touching, smelling. The forest taught them which leaves stopped bleeding, which roots eased fever.”
The Triple Burden of Displacement
Today, Mosopisyek children face what researchers call a “triple burden”: environmental deprivation, healthcare exclusion, and cultural erosion. Each burden amplifies the others, creating cascading impacts on child development.
Environmental Deprivation: Children now grow up on degraded hillsides, breathing dust instead of forest air. The diverse diet that once included dozens of wild vegetables, fruits, and medicinal plants has been replaced by monotonous reliance on cassava and maize, crops that provide calories but lack nutritional complexity. Forest springs that once provided clean water have been replaced by distant, often contaminated sources.
Healthcare Exclusion: The nearest government clinic lies 16 kilometres or three hours away on treacherous mountain paths. When families can reach healthcare facilities, they encounter language barriers, few staff speak Kupsabiny. Medical professionals often dismiss traditional healing practices as backward beliefs rather than complementary wisdom systems.
Cultural Erosion: When Mount Elgon National Park was established, traditional access to medicinal plants became criminal trespass. Children no longer participate in coming-of-age ceremonies that once marked their transition to adult responsibility.
Childhood in the Shadow of Loss
The health impacts on Mosopisyek children are stark and measurable. Malnutrition has become endemic, with children showing signs of stunting and micronutrient deficiencies that were rare when families had access to diverse forest foods. The shift from nutrient-rich wild vegetables, fruits, and protein sources to a monotonous diet of cassava, sweet potatoes, and occasional maize has created a generation of children whose physical development lags behind their forest-raised grandparents.
Francis narrates “In the forest, children ate forty different plants in a season. Now they’re lucky to eat four.” The loss of forest honey, wild greens, and protein from forest animals has created widespread anemia and compromised immune systems among the young.
Mental health challenges manifest as withdrawal, anxiety, and what elders recognize as deep sadness in children. Many exhibit symptoms that Western psychology might label as depression or PTSD, but which the Mosopisyek understand as spiritual disconnection, the severing of children’s relationship with the land that once provided identity, purpose, and belonging.
“The children know something is missing,” Francis explains. “They feel empty, angry, confused. They see their parents struggle, hear stories of abundance they cannot imagine, and wonder why they were born into loss.”
Adaptation as Both Strategy and Scar
The Mosopisyek continue to adapt with remarkable resilience, but every adaptation carries dual meaning as both a survival strategy and a cultural wound.
Francis now teaches younger generations using whatever materials displacement allows. Metal sheets replace hollowed gourds for beehives. Plastic containers substitute for carved wood. He demonstrates herb identification for plants that still grow in degraded soil, though he notes their diminished potency outside forest context. Traditional healers cultivate small medicinal gardens, becoming agricultural botanists by necessity, domesticating plants that once grew wild.
Children attend under-resourced schools where they learn in languages other than their mother tongue, studying curricula that ignore their ancestors’ environmental knowledge. They return home to oral histories growing fainter with each telling.
The Living Archive
Francis functions as more than a community elder, he’s a living archive of Indigenous health knowledge and an unofficial healthcare provider whose contributions remain invisible to formal systems. Though unlicensed and unpaid by government standards, he provides services no clinic could replicate.
His knowledge encompasses complex relationships between human and environmental health that Western medicine is only beginning to understand. He knows which plants become more potent after specific weather patterns, that some treatments work best combined with particular foods, that healing often requires attention to social and spiritual imbalances alongside physical symptoms.
“The bees still make honey,” he says, “but it tastes different now. They feed on eucalyptus instead of forest flowers. The sweetness remains, but the medicine has changed.”
The Urgency of Now
Francis’s teachings compete with time in ways his ancestors never experienced. Previous generations could assume knowledge would transmit across decades of gradual apprenticeship. Displacement has compressed this into urgent efforts to preserve what might disappear within a single generation.
If his grandchildren are to remember the forest as a living presence rather than a distant silhouette, they must inherit more than trauma stories. They need language carrying ecological concepts with no English equivalents, land-based memory connecting knowledge to place, and fundamental rights to thrive.
The forest looms green across the valley, its borders patrolled in conservation’s name. Inside, biodiversity is struggling. Outside, the last forest-born generation grows old, holding different conservation in their bodies: preservation of knowledge, of health practices, of place-based wisdom.
Children’s health in Yatui village cannot be separated from race, land, or history. It is intersectional by nature, shaped by displacement, conservation policies that criminalise traditional practices, and economic systems treating Indigenous knowledge as worthless.
“The forest remembers,” Francis repeats, watching his grandson aim the plastic slingshot at invisible targets. “But memory fades without practice. Our children must remember not just the trees, but how to live with them.”
The honey remains sweet, he says, but it carries different dreams now, dreams that balance preservation with adaptation, tradition with survival, the forest’s memory with children’s futures.
Further reading
Momentous Ruling Recognizes Land Rights of Indigenous Community. https://www.culturalsurvival.org/news/momentous-ruling-recognizes-land-rights-indigenous-community
The Oral History Culture and Traditions of The Mosopisyek Benet in Uganda CCFU 2023. https://www.scribd.com/document/858983883/The-Oral-History-Culture-and-Traditions-of-the-Mosopisyek-Benet-in-Uganda-CCFU-2023
“The key issue is a land question.” – Five decades of forest cover change in the Mount Elgon protected area system, Uganda.
Understanding malnutrition management through a socioecological lens: Evaluation of a community-based child malnutrition program in rural Uganda.
Traditional Ecological Knowledge and the Sustainable Development Goals
