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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