After meeting and working with Professor Wilson I fell in to passion
the same way that someone falls asleep: gradually and suddenly, from
one moment to another.—Tonga Torcida
This fall U.S. high school biology students are watching the documentary short film, The Guide, a coming-of-age tale set against the restoration of a war-torn national park in Mozambique. In the film, young Tonga Torcida dreams of becoming a tour guide at Gorongosa National Park, near where he was raised. But when he meets famed biologist E.O. Wilson, his new view of the world around him—and his future—places him at a crossroads. Should Tonga become a guide, or take on a bigger role in trying to keep the park alive?
After watching The Guide, students have been encouraged to share their questions with Tonga through the Gorongosa Park’s Facebook page and by email.
Inspired by Tonga Torcida’s story and his role at Gorongosa National Park, Maria, a U.S. high school student, began a correspondence with him last week. Read below an excerpt from their e-mails.
From: Maria
To: Tonga Torcida
Sep 17th, 4:50am
Hi Tonga! I am a student living in the United States and today in my
biology class, we watched “The Guide” and I was fascinated by you and
your motivation to do more for your country and people. How did you
find your passion to do this job? I was also amazed by your culture
and language in the movie. How was growing up in Mozambique? Also,
what are your plans to change the Gorongosa National Park so it
benefits the people and the wildlife of the area? I want you to know
that what you do is amazing. You will go far in life by doing what you
do best, helping nature and the people around you. Your passion will
take you far and you will change Mozambique and possibly the world.
Best of luck for you. Greetings from America and please write back
soon!
From: Tonga Torcida
To: Maria
Dear Maria,
In hope that you are doing well, thank you very much for your e-mail,
watching the film, and letting me know that you have liked it.
I thought that people wouldn’t like it, as you can see it’s from the
country side. And it’s my hope that you are enjoying the study of
Biology and the beginning of Life.
My passion to do this job came out after meeting with Professor
Wilson, previously I had a passion with nature, but not as deep as
that i gained from Dr. Wilson. Before, my goal was to learn about the
forest only so that I could get tips from tourists.
After meeting and working with Professor Wilson I fell in to passion
the same way that someone falls asleep: gradually and suddenly, from
one moment to another. I spent most of my life trying not to cry in
front of people who loved me, but I finished reading the book that he
gave me, loved it, and admit that I cried in some parts of this
beautiful life story that you watched on the movie and till now I have
this passion with this job.
Growing up in Mozambique is not as easy as it is in other places,
especially in places where there are very few opportunities e.g.
Gorongosa/Country side, It needs a lot of courage and efforts.
My plans for Gorongosa are very wide. I want to see Gorongosa
becoming the best place on earth, full of animals, the mountain all
covered by trees and bird-life, Stop illegal harvest of the natural
resources from all over Mozambique. People of Gorongosa and
Mozambique, they can only benefit, if, they are SMART and help me to
achieve these plans in order to save the wildlife in the area and
worldwide. As you can read from the web, Gorongosa is very rich and
it needs a big vision and critical thinking depending on the time and
nature of the people living around it, as you know that people of
today are not people of tomorrow, generations keep changing from one
generation to another generation. After the completeness of my
Bachelors in wildlife Management, I want to achieve at least 80% of
my plans through SMARTER objectives & organize the park’s resources.
To complete the other 20% will need in the future to go for further
studies at least Masters In wildlife Law Enforcement so that I can
convince politicians and members of parliament to approve and amend
wildlife laws suitable for crimes against natural resources.
Looking forward for you to visit and follow us at www.gorongosa.org
Warm Regards from Mozambique
Tonga Torcida
The Guide is directed by Jessica Yu and produced by Jessica Yu and Elise Pearlstein. The Guide has screened at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival and the Aspen Shortsfest.
For further information on The Guide connect to www.facebook.com/theguidedoc
Dear Tonga,
I am a 9th grade biology teacher in Fort Worth, Texas, USA. My students are 15 and 16 years old. Our students have rarely seen the true richness of nature and biology in person. They are city dwellers with computers and cell phones and many material items. I wish they had the passion you have to see past the concrete jungles that we live in and value the environment, creatures and interdependence we have on our natural world. Your story has really inspired me to bring this to them as I am using it in my classroom in our current unit. Thank you for doing what you do and allowing us to peek into your life.
I hope your studies are keeping you busy and continually passionate about increasing your knowledge. This knowledge that you will bring back to the mountain will impact your people and land for generations. My prayer is that it is received by the community and accepted as part of the greater good. I imagine there is a difficult line for people who have to worry about their now versus their futures. These decisions are hard to impress upon those who are hungry and don’t know better. I believe capturing the spirits and passions of your young will truly help. When they develop a conservationist mindset, they will protect what you are rebuilding. What is your plan to get more of the current community on board?
Have you ever been to the United States? I wonder if you have thought about bringing your story here to share in person with our youth. It would be a broader spectrum of cultures and diversity, many of whom are quite ignorant to all that protecting our natural world can entail. Your story, that of a young man with very little material belongings but with a great richness of passion, desire, loyalty and hope would be awe inspiring.
Peace and Nature be with you always,
Jessica
Dear Jessica,
Thank you very much for your email and hope that you have enjoyed using the Guide documentary with your students. I am very sorry for late reply had many issues to sort out, although till now still have many pending issues.
I regret to hear that your students have rarely been in contact with nature in person and to say that I was born within nature and all my studies are being done in nature. Well, being in the city it’s also nice. Practicality of young person to be entrusted with protecting and preserving protected areas it is not an easier task, since it means committing yourself with nature and being away of the new world and out of technology.
People who have committed themselves to save nature means to surrender a technology and having sleepless nights, endure similar ordeals to soldiers in combat. Furthermore, they routinely face death, injury, or torture from poachers, and the wild animals they protect can kill them too. Apart from these aspects you operate in the bush under harsh physical conditions, often with inadequate equipment, and support and zero communication.
Well, it’s my hope that will be accepted and make a big difference in the world of conservation, and there is always an aspect that communities tend to ask themselves questions without getting any answer e.g. why should I protect trees which do not give me any direct benefits rather than farming?
This is something that we need to start with, old people normally tend to be to political and with many stories trying to deny your approaches and less effort are accepted and therefore, hence resources expenditure and ending up on failure of conservation, not only this, given the nature of the problem, if a lasting solution is to be realized, habitat loss should be viewed as a multisectoral rather than a single sectoral issue.
Studies have been keeping me busy dealing with proposal writing up, reconnaissance studies and presentations and now it’s time to go to the field for data collection. But it has been postponed till May, because some of proposals are not clear and it seems like some of the students who were told to repeat their proposals till now are still facing some problems.
What is your plan to get more of the current community on board?
If it’s to get more of the current community on board of conservation efforts i could have first improved some of the aspects that need to be addressed urgently and adopt some measures which many of protected areas authorities tend to forget these aspects. Although some strategies are not new, but they have some drawbacks that need to be addressed.
Adopt the poverty reduction policies/strategies that are conservation-friendly: The program of human survival is critical if forces threatening the ecosystem are to be stopped. It is illogical for anyone to accept a scenario where preservation of biodiversity implies starvation. To reduce the pressures on natural resources and habitats, alternative strategies capable of reducing the necessity of encroaching into wildlife habitats should be adopted.
Make human population growth a priority agenda: Although population growth is one of the underlying causes of threats facing mount Gorongosa and leading to destruction of the rainforest and this can be observed within different scales of different decades within the ecosystem, it rarely receives adequate attention in the current conservation policies. Unless proactive intervention policies are sought, it is apparent that pressure on land and resources will increase. Population increase may also dilute the effectiveness of some current strategies and exacerbate the conflicts. For example, population increase may decrease the share of wildlife-related benefits to people and therefore defeat the aim of the strategy i.e. motivating people to refrain from destructive activities.
Provide adequate conservation status to critical wildlife areas: Over 50% of the Gorongosa Marromeu ecosystem enjoy legal protection as protected areas – e.g. National Park, Game Reserves and Hunting concessions. However, some critical areas are either not or inadequately protected. Creation of the new wildlife PAs and/or upgrading of the existing PAs from the lower to higher categories can be adopted as one of the measures. To make this measure effective, observance of human interests is imperative.
Enhance conservation education and research: The basic lack of knowledge contributes to destructive activities on wildlife habitats. This is due to failure of the people to consider the long-term consequences of their actions. Provision of appropriate conservation education is, therefore, important. Emphasis should focus on educating people about the value of wildlife and their habitats, the consequences of habitat destruction/loss and ways of mitigating the problem. Well this is currently already on board with our CEC education programs, but they still have a long way to go.
Involve local communities, institute participatory land use planning and provide adequate conservation incentive: For decades, conservation has been pursued against the interests of local people and, therefore, resulted into loss of trust, hostility and local resentment towards conservation. Of recent, efforts to involve local people are being adopted. However, these efforts have been inadequate and passive. Essentially, genuine participation is lacking. Genuine and effective participation should involve empowering local people to take part in designing, planning, decision making, implementation, bene fit sharing, monitoring and evaluation.
Have you ever been to the United States? I wonder if you have….
I have never been in the USA and I actually thought of it but there has never been a topic related to this particular matter.
It’s my hope that you will keep using it over your teaching carrier and wishing your students best of luck on their studies.
KIND REGARDS
TONGA TORCIDA
We hold http://www.gorongosa.net in trust!
Cell phone: +255 (0) 68 96 28 401
Cell phone: +258 (0) 82 69 71 422
P.O.Box 1983, Beira, Sofala Mozambique
P.O.Box 3031, Moshi-Kilimanjaro Tanzania