At 90 years old, Mauda Nyiravuguwenda carries a memory few Batwa still hold.

She remembers the forest. As a young Batwa woman living inside the Bwindi Forest, food wasn’t something you searched for; it was something you lived within. “When we were in the forest, food was everywhere,” she recalls. That was her world. Until it wasn’t. When the Batwa were evicted in the early 1990s from their ancestral land, everything changed overnight. The forest that had sustained generations was no longer accessible. The foods she once gathered freely were suddenly out of reach. Without income to buy food, Mauda began sending children into the bush to search for whatever greens they could find to feed her household of twelve. But Mauda is more than her hardship; she is a knowledge holder. A caregiver. “We cannot return to the forest,” she says, “so we must look forward, our future is here.” Through DIG’s training, Mauda began rebuilding, not just her garden, but her connection to the foods that once surrounded her. She learned how to cultivate indigenous vegetables using practices rooted in her local environment and seasons, while saving seeds to carry her harvest forward year after year. This is not a return to the past. It is a future she is growing herself.