The Bambuti are also an indigenous group that are said to have migrated from Ituri forest of the Congo River basin. The Bambuti are nomadics who moved from place to place hunting and gathering wild animals, so they moved from Congo and settled in western Uganda in the districts of Bundibugyo and Kasese.
The Bambuti are also referred to as the pygmies and said to be the first inhabitants of the Rwenzori regions before the arrival of Bantu. Their original home is the Congo forest speaking the kumbuti language.
The Bambuti people live in villages that are organized as bands and every band consists of 6-60 people which are small and circular but usually temporary. The Bambuti move from one place to another as they look for food and in most cases their houses are temporary, they camp where they find what to eat or where they hunted.
The Bambuti are so much skilled in hunting which is their main source of food, meat is the main food for the Bambuti people which they supplement with bananas, sweet potatoes, beans which they get in exchange for meat with the farmers. They live by hunting and gathering and that’s why they don’t have permanent housings.
The Bambuti being referred to the people of the forest, their love for the forest is at a high percentage to the extent that they are not troubled by luck of a home. It is said that if the Bambuti eat and drink then the rest is history to them.
The pygmies in Semuliki National park are located on both sides of the Semuliki River and also related to the Basu pygmies in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The Bambuti are smaller in numbers compared to the Batwa of Mgahinga and Bwindi Impenetrable National parks, this is because the Bambuti and Batwa are mistaken to be the same people but they are totally different people. Though they all live by hunting and were both evicted from the tropical forests but their ways are different from each other.
The Bambuti have limited hunting and gathering rights and are also allowed to grow and smoke marijuana in their areas. The Bambuti today are visited by the tourists that visit Semuliki National Park because they have their own local guides, but in the past years they had non Bambuti guides that used to steal their money which annoyed the Bambuti and refused the tourists from visiting them.
The Batwa and Bambuti tours in Uganda are cultural experiences done by visitors alongside gorilla trekking, golden monkey trekking, birding, game drives, visiting sempaya hot springs, among other activities in Bwindi Impenetrable, Mgahinga, Semuliki and Rwenzori National parks in western Uganda, where visitors learn about the indigenous, minority and people of the forest that make Uganda the leading destination for cultural tours.