A Vision Group team went into the countryside, investigating the impact of this global phenomenon. In the fourth of an eight-part series. Raziah Athman tells you the story from the perspective of the people of Kibiro.
Selina Bwikara scrubs the earth with all her effort. Her frail fingers struggle to maintain the grip on the curved metallic plate, but she continues until she makes a heap of the blackish soil. It is a tedious job, yet the output from a single collection is very little. She wipes sweat off her face with dirty sand-studded fingers, before bending again under the scorching sun in a valley in Kibiro, Hoima district.
Kibiro, a small fishing village on the shores of Lake Albert in southwestern Uganda, is famed for its hot springs and traditional salt mining. What Bwikara is doing is collecting the raw material from which the salt is filtered. The residents of the village are poverty-stricken, unable to produce sufficient agricultural produce to support themselves and, therefore, mainly rely on the neighbouring communities for basic necessities.
The salt mining business is a centuries-old tradition and the main source of livelihood for the majority of the about 4,000 residents. “We use our local tools to cut the soil, which we mince, spread to dry for two weeks, filter and then heat the liquid to remain with solid residue, which is salt. We take the salt to the market, sell it and then buy food for our families,” Bwikara explains.
This is how she has survived for 80 years. However, that livelihood is now threatened by the swelling waters of Lake Albert that has extended its shores closer to the salt pans. The hot springs are heavily silted whenever it rains, making the waters cooler. The community has to desilt the springs from time to time to keep them from dying.
Resident speaks out
Godfrey Abigaba, the village chairperson, who was born and raised in the area, is at a loss of what has happened to the once beautiful village with good weather conditions. The village did not experience such extreme weather patterns, even just twenty years ago,” he says.
Unknown to Bwikara and Abigaba is that the aggressiveness of the weather is linked to climate change, a global phenomenon caused by human activity that has resulted in global warming and altered weather patterns. The crumbling salt gardens bear these warnings of long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns.
The United Nations says human activities have been the main driver of climate change, primarily due to the burning of fossil fuels, which produce heat-trapping gases. The developed countries are especially pumping emissions from manufacturing and electricity production, causing climate change that transcends the entire world.
Actions fuelling climate change
Both Bwikara and Abigaba are aware that human actions, such as deforestation, could be responsible for their current predicament. “Back then, the Kibira (Kibiro) had so many trees but people came and cut them down. This is why weather patterns are changing and it gets extremely hot nowadays,” Abigaba says.
“The areas where trees have been cut belong to individuals with land titles. They can do whatever they want on their property with little regard to the impact on climate. This is a policy gap that locals want to be addressed immediately,” he explains. After the devastating floods in 2020, what used to be a thriving fishing industry — and the best alternative to salt extraction — was washed away.
Since then, there have been more women mining salt — a sanctuary that is now threatened by climate change. Bwikara and many other women like her are breadwinners at home.
Ironically, the 85-year-old is bothered that they will soon have no fuel to cook, especially the salt, if people continue to cut down trees in a village where you can count shrubs. The generations before her depended on this salt and those after her are looking up to salt for their very existence. Salt extraction is a skill she has taught all her children. “A young child tags along their parent to dig in the farm and it is the same for salt mining. We hand the children plates to come with us. They scrub the earth from one part and me the other”.
What environment officer says
Joseline Nyangoma, the Hoima district environment officer, cites an example of the severe impact of climate change that they are experiencing in the region. “It has affected mostly our livelihoods in terms of food, when we do not have enough food, it is going to affect our nutrition and when we do not have enough nutrition, all our children will be malnourished and sick,” Nyangoma says. The salt mining industry thrives under hot temperatures.
Harvests shift in sizes, depending on how much soil they can dry in a given period. The hotter the earth gets, the larger the quantities of salt extracted. One can produce 100kg of salt in three months under dry conditions and only 10kg during the rainy season.
“This ground on which we are standing is weak. When any single drop of water from rain falls on this surface, it makes the whole place wet, washing away soil,” Richard Irumba, a local council secretary, says.
The majority of people born along the sandy beach do not make it out of the valley. Even if the Government has hinted on relocating the entire village, the women in Kibiro are relentless. Christine Katusiime has raised her children on extracting salt from these pans for a decade now.
The salt, she says, provide food for her family. They would go hungry without the gardens. Yet they are powerless over climatic conditions that could wipe out the centuries-old salt mines.
“Some salt gardens were washed away into the lake, but what can we do? All we need is a market, so we can make some money. Sometimes we spend the whole day in the market without customers buying our salt,” Katusiime says, as her daughter piles soil right behind.
The population in the valley is roughly 4,000, the majority being women. Every family in Kibiro is allocated a garden to extract salt from. “The gardens are inherited and allocated to women. For example, if I marry a woman, I provide for her space — a piece of land — for her and the children to work,” Abigaba explains.
Seven hundred metres away are the salty shores of Lake Albert. Over the escarpments, one can see the damage that floods have caused. Enormous trenches make for an easy flow of water once it rains. The pressure falls on the salt gardens, which are run by women and girls only.
Mining through generations
Delisha Taremwa, 13, has been extracting salt since she was eight. “I found my parents mining salt. They grew up mining it and I am also doing the same,”Taremwa says. Melanie Kanyesige, 13, says she wants to be a soldier and hopes this will give her the powers to fight those cutting down trees.
“We are telling people we need to stop cutting trees because climate change is real,” she says. The makeshift houses in Kibiro are close to each other and land is communally owned. Inside Serah Yenek’s hut, a liquid boils with white crystals sticking around the saucepan as evaporation takes place. She scoops the whitish residue, adding it to a horn — standard measurement for the salt — of about two kilogrammes.
Each horn of salt is sold for sh10,000. Joseline Nyangoma, the Hoima district environment officer, says: “Currently, we have rudimentary methods and this affects their lives, but we are slightly better than Katwe because we do not have water.”
Plan of action
Barirega Akankwasah, the executive director of the National Environmental Management Authority, declared 2021-2030 a decade of ecosystem restoration in the country. “The Government has developed a ten-year plan of action for restoration of the environment and natural resources,” he says. To join the efforts, the people of Kibiro want to roll out a tree-planting project that they believe will serve as a canopy to block greenhouse gas emissions and also reduce the impact of floods and landslides.
Experts are suggesting partnerships to tackle environmental degradation but, above all, they need to see action on the ground. Several campaigns have been rolled out to plant trees around countries, but these hardly achieve the half mark of the target.
Most people in Kibiro blame the continuous degradation on the lack of laws that can be enforced locally. Godfrey Abigaba, the Kibiro village chairperson, for example, wants his LC1 office empowered to take action against charcoal dealers.
Others, such as Christine Katusiime, a salt miner, want an alternative source of income or livelihood. The revenues generated from the hot springs only cater for simple needs, such as buying pens for pupils at the only school in the valley.
Gardens eaten by silt
Salt mining has been the answer for thousands of people in Kibiro, but gardens are slowly being eaten up by silt from the hills and Lake Albert waters, whose levels have risen drastically over the past few years.