Friday 14 September 2012

The lake: trap or asset?


Today around twenty communities overlook the lake with a total population of around 100.000 inhabitants. Life seems to have a quiet and peaceful pace, which twice a week is accelerated by the market of Rutinda, a tiny village, yet principal centre of the lake. Rutinda can be reached from Kabale, the main town of the district, by private car, boda-boda - a moto-taxi driving crazily - or a couple of hours walk along a winding and scenographic country road. Rutinda, a small fishing village with some local bars, is not particularly attractive nor interesting, but becomes lively on market days - Mondays and Fridays - with a multitude of colourful canoes arriving since early morning from all the different sides of the lakes for buying and selling fruits, vegetables and second hand clothes.

The lake is essential to life and survival of its inhabitants, despite the fact that there is not much fish. Data on the lake depth are uncertain and vary depending on the sources. For some, it is the second deepest lake in Africa. According to Paul Ngologoza, an eminent historian and politician of the region of Kigezi, before 1919 in Lake Bunyonyi only the encere, a type of edible frog, lived in the lake. Although this is unlikely, the lake has never been inhabited by large quantities of fish, being oligotrophic. Probably, the immediate depth doesn’t create the ideal habitat for the survival of species that live in shallow waters, such as the Tilapia or the Nile perch, which lived in the river before it became a lake. During the colonial era great efforts were made to supply the lake with fish. According to Ngologoza, the biggest dates back to 1927, when the district commissioner sent the order to manually carry a certain amount of fish from Lake Edward to Lake Bunyonyi. Initially, the experiment was a success that made commercial fishing proliferate. But then, in the early '50s, for reasons that remain unknown, the fish died in mass, to the point that "the lake was covered by floating bodies of dead fish."

Today only small amounts of African catfish and of the small but delicious crayfish live in the lake. But the other hand, the lake is the main supply of water. It supplies the whole town of Kabale for both domestic and industrial use, while many of the local communities take water directly from the lake. Its water is used for drinking, cooking, washing, irrigating the fields. But if the lake is essential to life in this corner of the world, it is often fatal. Canoe is the usual means of transport and locals are expert navigators since early childhood. Despite that, very few are able to swim. As a result, the annual rate of drowning is very high. After AIDS and malaria, it is the third cause of death for local communities. Today, local association Edirisa has built a swimming pool on the bank of the lake, where international volunteers give swimming lessons to children, hoping to partially solve the problem in the medium term.


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