A field unit sets out before dawn to walk the line where the volcano’s forest meets the highest farms. The work is part survey, part diplomacy, and entirely about the space in between.
On the slopes of Mgahinga, the treeline and the cropline chase each other up the mountain. Where they meet is not a fence. It is a negotiation, redrawn a little every season by rain, by roots, and by the choices of the people who farm there.
Walking the boundary
The team logs where the forest has been pushed back and where it has crept forward, where a corridor still lets wildlife move and where it has narrowed to a thread. Each mark on the map is also a conversation with a family who knows that ground better than any survey ever could.
We are not drawing a wall. We are drawing a lane — wide enough for all of us.
— Field unit lead, Mgahinga
By midday the notebook is full and the boundary is a little better understood — not as a barrier, but as a shared edge worth tending. Tomorrow the unit will walk it again. The lane is never finished; it is kept