What Tom Meant to Us (And Why You Should Care)

Quarterly newsletter for Gorilla Highlands lovers

It is notoriously difficult to find a decent nightwatchman in the Gorilla Highlands region. The local mentality is that “you can kill two birds with one stone, do two jobs at once — one during the night, one during the day,” Edirisa staff Moses Oshaba explains. That puts the employer in an unfortunate situation because the watchman will inevitably sleep at work. But there’s more, according to Moses: “Most are drunkards, they pretend that alcohol is an energy drink. Some are thieves themselves.”

Gosh, we had huge problems with our security throughout the first few years of Edirisa on Lake Bunyonyi! Because we are part of Bufuka Primary School, we couldn’t erect tall walls with barbed wire at the top or keep mean dogs, so a watchman needed to be truly devoted to his profession. And several simply weren’t. Some were probably involved in the burglaries and thefts that took place.

That all changed in July 2004 when Tom Karemire entered our lives. A former prison guard, he wasn’t here to joke! But there was a special tenderness to him too.

“Our newborn Enya was mostly awake at night, and she insisted on being carried. She would cry every time I sat down, so I had to be not just standing but moving. What I did was go outside the Flower House, walking back and forth to keep her calm. Tom always came to keep me company until Enya fell asleep again,” Pamela Kanyunyuzi remembers the challenges of 2005.

That very same year, volunteer Luka Kotnik ran our first canoe trek around Lake Bunyonyi, one that extended towards Kisoro.

“I was part of the Edirisa family and so was Tom. He was my friend, we would sit by the Canteen every evening, share stories and cigarettes. He could be fierce — once he almost speared my colleague Brigita when she went to brush her teeth by the lake — but to me he was always a gentleman, in an old-school way, so I had much respect for him and his wife. I worked a lot with Tom, on many occasions, but the wildest among them was probably the 5-day Bunyonyi–Kisoro expedition. To make it shorter, I asked him if he would welcome our hikers for two nights on his island. Moreover, as a prison guard he had walked the route through Echuya Forest clandestinely for years. Without a word he packed his bag, grabbed a tent, and we went! The picture of his Habukomi Island at six in the morning on the day we departed has been hanging on my wall ever since.”

That led to 20 special years of regularly camping at Tom’s island home, on the soft grass just beneath his house. The old man took care of all the meals and wouldn’t let anybody but his daughter help him in the kitchen. His crayfish curry was beloved, and “he was so proud of the warm chapatis and wild honey breakfast,” adds Joe Kahiri.

Let’s stop here for a second and allow Kahiri, a proud Mukiga of southwestern Uganda, to define his folks for us: “Cultures and traditions have meshed, and the Bakiga are taking on ways of doing things from wider Uganda. We no longer end our drinking sessions with a good bar brawl; we have learned to haggle and bargain and try to squeeze a good deal when we can. Truth is a little bit more relative now than it was back then. Bakiga were known to be strong and illustrious workers. Now it depends on which Mukiga you’re dealing with.”

Tom was a traditional Mukiga.

He was straightforward. “His no was no, and his yes you couldn’t change,” says Bright Owen.

Tom was honest and principled. After spending over a decade keeping thieves away, he eventually brought a thief to work for us, his grandson. Once it became clear this boy of limited intelligence but endless ambition had defrauded Edirisa of thousands of dollars, Tom stood by us. He confronted his family for the sake of what was right.

“That is not easy for most people here because they fear small eyes,” explains Levi Ayebare.

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This newsletter is written by ML Rwebandira, adding the founder’s personal touch to what we communicate as Gorilla Highlands Experts. I’ve asked some veterans of ours to contribute their stories, enriching the narration, but now I’m taking over a section.

I loved Tom’s integrity, and I despise narrow eyes, as they visualise the pressure of society in the local language. People are afraid to speak their minds publicly because they fear repercussions.

But we need to call a spade a spade, or we will never develop these lands in a healthy, sustainable way. That’s why I propose we develop the Tom Karemire Award, to be given annually to upright individuals in our transboundary area. Others call them crazy; we will call them our heroes. And keep the memory of Tom.

If you are interested in this project, please drop us a line.

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“Tom was always kind to me, I loved spending New Year’s with him and his family. In my memories he’s really warm, I remember his bright smile and joy for the world; it inspired me to smile too. I felt safe around him, there aren’t many people like that,” my daughter Enya brings us back to Tom’s kindness.

Her brother Maani adds: “As a young boy after a night of camping, I went with Tom to the dying campfire and we sat together for maybe half an hour. We talked a bit, catching up with each other, and he told me to become strong and do well, and to visit him regularly. I’m glad I did.”

Former volunteer Živa Škrlovnik: “Despite the fact that he sometimes snored loudly — and when we asked him if he was sleeping, said: ‘Yes yes, very awake’ — he made us feel completely safe. It was him, one man in a raincoat with a spear, who silently watched the lake change colours dusk to dawn, maybe so insignificant to the vastness of the world, but so important to us, who stood between people and fear and, somehow, made the fear go away merely with his presence. He also made me feel welcome. I was a freshy at Edirisa, somewhat lost and a bit shy, and he told me stories which I still cannot say if they’re true or not, and remembered my name when so many others still struggled with it.”

Simon Dreven, another Slovenian helper, says that Tom was one of the reasons he decided to visit Uganda again this year: “Those with whom he had formed certain bonds, he carried with him. His last words to me were, ‘We keep remembering each other,’ while to Sonja, whom he had just met, he said, ‘We shall remember each other.’”

Isabelle Masozera, a Rwandan moderator, gets poetic: “There was a quiet discipline about Tom, a thoughtfulness in every word he spoke. He seemed to weigh his words not out of caution but out of respect for language, for truth, for life itself. And yet, in the same breath, he carried a playfulness that made everyone around him feel at ease. Tom was a storyteller in the truest sense of the word. When he spoke, you could see what he described, smell it, feel it. Proverbs rolled off his tongue effortlessly, each one carrying layers of wisdom that made you think long after the conversation ended. When I was pregnant, I told him I wasn’t going to take antenatal medicine, that I wanted to nourish my body and my baby through food and nature. And just like that, Tom became my guide. He had a story for every plant, every fruit, every herb.”

The man’s storytelling features again and again in everyone’s memories. Here’s Gerald Twinamasiko of Edirisa: “The most interesting part of Tom were his stories, oh my God! I will miss them!!! The most memorable was the one about the relationship of an ant and a snake, two friends. They decided to test each other’s honesty. The snake asked the ant if it would not eat it after it died, and the ant said no. One day, the snake pretended to be dead and the ant attempted to swallow it, and from that moment on they became enemies. The moral was to know who our friends are and to make better decisions.”

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Seriously, what to add to all these beautiful words and the death announcement I composed last week? Tom was my brother, my granddad, my son, my business partner, and pretty much everything else.

My fondest memory is that when we took him to Mgahinga to trek the mountain gorillas, he talked about their size by comparing them to goats, and he wrote a list of all their names — his substitute for taking pictures.

My biggest pride is that in 2014 he hiked with us from Lake Bunyonyi to Lake Mutanda, an activity meant to celebrate my 40th birthday.

My biggest regret is … I don’t have any! True, last week when I heard that he was on oxygen at a Kabale clinic, I could only come the following day, and he had passed away before I even crossed into Uganda. But I actually wouldn’t want to remember my Tom as frail, because to me he was a symbol of vitality and strength.

Noticing his potential, I helped Tom become a hotelier and uplifted his last two decades of life. And so did he, the lives of thousands of people.

On Saturday, 18 October 2025, we put him to rest. The 9-minute video I made about the occasion is sprinkled with historical clips of Tom, and many people mentioned in this text appear too. Do watch this one, and then head to more tales about Tom Karemire, the legend.