At home with the Batwa people of Uganda – a photo essay

The third photo essay in our series of work in collaboration with the Magnum Foundation focuses on the Batwa people in Uganda. The photojournalist Esther Mbabazi travelled to Bwindi national park and spent time photographing several families of the nomadic hunter-gatherers

• This work is supported and produced by the Magnum Foundation, with a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation

In late March this year, Esther Mbabazi left behind Kampala, the chaotic capital of Uganda, and headed for the hills, forests, swamps and grasslands of Bwindi Impenetrable national park an eight-hour drive to the west. She went to find the communities of the Batwa people, who live on the park's green, rainy edges.

Mbabazi, 26, had always been curious about the Batwa and wanted to find out how one of the most marginalised communities in east Africa had coped with the Covid-19 pandemic. In recent months she had been working on gruelling stories about human rights abuses following the disputed election in Uganda in January, and this new project, sponsored by the Magnum Foundation, was a welcome change.