For the third year in a row I took part in an annual road trip for my Rotaract Club of Kampala City, through the western region of Uganda. We covered more than 1,000 kilometres in four days and three nights, and planted trees to save the environment.

The scenery is breathtaking; undulating green hills untouched for aeons, matooke plantations and grazing fields for the cattle as far the eye can see. The best part of the journey was at that point where I gazed on the vast expanse of the Rift Valley from the Kichwamba escarpment.

We spent our second night in Kasese, a town situated inside the Rift Valley. It lies near the Rwenzori Mountains, 36 kilometres away from the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The following morning, we set out for Kilembe Valley, located in Bulembya Division of Kasese Municipality.

Kilembe is a fascinating place, and has much to offer. Apart from breathtaking scenery, it hosts the Kilembe Mines Golf Club, one of the oldest golf clubs in the country, having been set up in 1968.

The area experienced devastating flooding in May, when River Nyamwamba, which runs through the valley and feeds most of Kasese Municipality, broke its banks.

Kilembe Valley is famous for its mines. I remember from my primary school days we were taught that copper was mined here. The mines have, however, been closed for some 30 years, since the fall in world copper prices brought the mining industry here to a halt.

However, recently, there has been interest in reviving the mines. Last December, nine companies placed their bids to invest technical and financial resources to rejuvenate Kilembe mines after decades of redundancy.

The River Nyamwamba is fed by melting glaciers from the Rwenzori Mountains, and runs into Kilembe Valley, in some places just a few metres from residential houses. I was told by the some of the locals that the river changed its original course when the copper mines were being set up, and most of the local houses were built in what used to be the path of the river.

On any other day, the breeze that blows through this place, the sound of the river as it crashes against the rocks, and the natural beauty that surrounds this valley would have been heartwarming. But on this day, the whole place looked as though a bomb had gone off — such was the level of destruction by the floods.

Houses had been uprooted from their foundations and left balancing on the pillars that they were built on, the hospital was partly destroyed by the rampaging water and boulders that were carried downstream, and medical equipment was flooded. I saw a huge tree trunk that was carried downstream and landed on a house that was already torn apart, water pipes unearthed and broken. The families that lived near the river said all their property had been washed away.

But it wasn’t all nature’s fault. The local authorities here did not de-silt the river as was the practice years ago. Locals said the de-silting equipment had been sold off ages ago, and so the banks are not reinforced as they should be.

With the heavy rains as well as melting glaciers, the waters surged beyond capacity, and since Kilembe is a valley, there was nowhere to run when the river burst its banks.

As I left Kilembe, I reflected on the danger that global warming is posing to the people there. The glaciers that feed the River Nyamwamba have been melting at an increasing rate, and the weather is getting more unpredictable and intense.

I hope one day the river can be brought under control.