Wildlife Over 60 years now, at the time of filing this story, environmentalist Godfrey Kato of Kiwologoma Uganda Wakiso district, made headlines when he invited local journalists to profile him and his unique type of residence, built up a tree branches, in pursuance of conserving the environment.
Kato hails from the most populous ethnic tribal group of the Baganda from the largest Kingdom in Uganda, (Buganda Kingdom). He belongs to the Nkima (monkey) clan. In his pursuit to conserve the environment and in his overzealous ambitions to copy the living habitat of his totem the monkey, Kato conceived the ideal of erecting a house up on tree branches.
He, systematically made wooden ladders that facilitate him to climb a huge tree adjacent to his house. On completion of the tree house, he abandoned his family house with wife and children and started residing in his tree house where he even wired electricity supply.
His house has components of a sitting room down “stairs” and a bedroom upstairs which two rooms serve the purpose of a meditation and a reading place alternately. Kato is a fluent English and Luganda speaker, a musician and a song writer. The old man claims that he did this in order to encourage people in his community to conserve the environment by desisting from cutting trees around them. Although he laments hat “his community has cut almost all trees and there’s no wind breaker” making his tree habitat a very risky environment, God has kept his mercy bestowed onto him to the extent that no storm has broken his tree branches that anchor his house to date.
Despite his endurance, Kato complains bitterly about harsh windy and chilly weather whenever it occurs.