Beyond the crystals: Life at Lake Katwe salt mines

Salt extraction at Lake Katwe in Uganda. 
 

Photo credit: Bamuturaki Musinguzi | Nation Media Group

I arrive on the shores of the Lake Katwe and I’m hit by an offensive odour of rotten eggs. This is hydrogen sulphide gas.

But the dozens of artisanal salt miners and traders going about their daily business in the mid-morning sun are undeterred by the stench.

Some – men and women of all ages – clean their ponds and salt pans, others haggle over prices with salt traders, while men arrive on rafts with the blocks of rock salt.

The ponds, about 10 feet by 12 feet wide and three to five feet deep, demarcate sections of the shores of Uganda’s largest salt lake, which is owned by private individuals and families.

Salt extraction has been a source of livelihood for these people for decades.

Lake Katwe is a crater lake north of the Mweya peninsular in the southwestern part of Queen Elizabeth National Park in western Uganda.

Miners extract high quality salt crystals that are sold as table salt, rock salt blocks and salty mud used as salt licks for cattle.

Sanyu Kasoro, a salt winner, tourist guide and owner of seven salt pans, explains how salt winning is done in the pans and mined in the lake.

“We never wish for rain because, when it rains, we can’t win or mine,” he says. “Salt can’t be formed in the pans in the rainy season.”

Salt winning is the process of extracting salt from seawater, salty lakes or brine.

Winning is dependent on the sun for evaporation, which leaves behind salt crystals in the shallow pans. The miner then pushes the salt downstream and after seven days the salt is harvested.

The first harvest, Kasoro says, is salt lick, which is bought by pastoralists from neighbouring communities, while the second layer is edible salt.

The salt miners

Zadock Sebagala, vice chairman of the Lake Katwe Mahonde Salt Extractors and Traders Cooperative Association, says there are about 80 salt miners there.

Sebagala says alcohol is not permitted at the site because intoxicated miners could die in the lake.

“The men only work for three days a week to avoid salt effects, especially on the skin,” Kasoro says.

Women are not allowed to mine, and the men who do wear shorts or swimwear. They smear themselves with petroleum jelly so that water slips off their skin.

Rock salt

A trader holding an umbrella stands next to her rock salts at the Lake Katwe Salt Works.

Photo credit: Bamuturaki Musinguzi | Nation Media Group

Nicholas Kagongo, director of the Katwe Eco Tourism Information Centre, says rock salt takes three to five years to form.

“It is renewable and sustainable -- formed through a natural process and chemical reactions. About 10 percent of this salt is consumed in homes, while almost 90 percent is utilised by the textile industry to fix colours in fabrics, soap factories, chemical and pharmaceutical industries.”

“Rock salt can treat intestinal cancer, cough and other throat diseases when licked or used in cooked food. The special brown mud colour can restore bleached skin. Buffaloes and warthogs bathe in this mud to kill ticks and heal wounds. This mud strengthens the hoofs of the buffaloes,” Kagongo adds.

Kagongo says they have two peak seasons of salt mining in a year -- the first from January to mid-March, and the second from July to mid-August. 

The miners sell the salt to the Lake Katwe Mahonde Salt Extractors and Traders Cooperative Association.

Sebagala, who has been involved in salt mining in Katwe since 1979, says they sell locally and to cattle keeping communities and traders from Rwanda, DR Congo and South Sudan.

100kg of rock salt sells for Ush148,000 ($40.4), while 100kg salt for human consumption sells for Ush150,000 ($50) and Ush200,000 ($55).

The Katwe-Kabatooro Town Council used to collect Ush1 billion ($273,205) a year in taxes from the salt sector, but with the effects of climate change, these tax revenues have declined.