Lake Edward

Driving through the Queen Elisabeth NP, we reached Edi’s lake. Lake Edward lies in the Albertine Rift, at the border of Uganda and DR Congo. We headed to Katwe, which is a village at the lake and inside the national park, living poorly on fishing and salt mining.

Kazinga Channel

The natural Kazinga Channel connects Lake George with Lake Edward. North of the channel the landscape is covered with small crater lakes.

Salty crater lake
Katwe Tourist Centre

At the tourist centre, we arranged a guided visit to the crater lake, where the locals are mining salt, and a second lake with birds.

Katwe crater lake

The locals build ponds, in which the salty water evaporates, and the salt can be harvested. But first a layer of mud has to be shovelled away to get to the salt. The water also contains chemicals, which are a danger to the workers, but they work all day in the water without any protection.

Shovelling the mud out of the pond

The highly crystallised salt is used for human consumption, and the dirty muddy salt is used as salt licks for cows but also for tenderising meat and beans.

While the women work in the salt ponds, the men gather rock salt from the bottom of the lake.

Prisoners working for little money to construct a pond

Next, we visited a smaller lake, which doesn’t contain so much salt but is popular with many birds. After a walk around the lake, we went to nearby Lake Edward to visit the fishing community.

Pied avocat
Black-winged stilt
Preparing the net with stones and a floating bark

After the tour, we asked our guide Moses for the best place for a Rolex – Ugandan street food. He took us to a restaurant behind the filling station.

Moses – our guide
Filling station

We had seen some animals at the park, but now we wanted to track some chimpanzees.

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