Uganda's poor brave salty, flesh-scarring waters to make a meager living

Julius Mutwalhughuma's job is eating him alive.

Three times a week for the past 20 years, Mutwalhughuma has waded into Uganda's Lake Katwe in search of rock salt, which he sells to traders from Uganda, Congo and Rwanda.

He keeps at it even though the lake's highly concentrated, corrosive salt water has eaten away at his skin, leaving scars and open sores. After a spell in the water, his pockmarked legs sparkle with salt granules.

The scars heal but they itch, and when he scratches, the wounds reopen, Mutwalhughuma, 64, told The Associated Press. "It is very painful."

On a continent where more than 300 million live in extreme poverty, the poorest have little choice about how they make their living _ whether in the lake, or toiling deep in gold mines despite the risk of rock falls, or breathing poisonous pesticides on flower farms and rubber plantations.

The chemicals in Lake Katwe are clearly unhealthy, experts say. The government has not acted on requests to study the risks.

"No studies have been done because these people are voiceless," says Dr. Assay Ndizihiwe, a senior government health official who has worked in Katwe. "These chemicals are clearly corrosive to skin, causing scarring and nerve damage, and it's very likely they have other effects we don't yet know about."

Mutwalhughuma is among 3,000 people who work at Lake Katwe, earning around US$2 (euro1) per 100 kilograms (220 pounds) haul of rock salt. In an average week, each might harvest 15 sacks _ meaning about four times the dollar-a-day average earned by 39 percent of Ugandans.

But the physical price is high, and the protection is primitive.

The miners glue paper over open wounds. They wade into the water wearing condoms and with their legs wrapped in tire tubes.

Health experts say these offer little protection.

While the men collect the rock salt, women work knee-deep in manmade pools on the shores. These salt pans, carved into neat squares, produce granular salt harvested once every four days from the bottom of the pools. A day's labor pays 60 U.S. cents (about 40 euro cents).

The women also suffer lesions, and coat themselves in cassava paste, believing _ not on the basis of any medical evidence _ that the water causes infertility.

"If I work in deep water, it enters my uterus and I feel pain," says Valeria Masika, Mutwalhughuma's wife.

Francis Kayanja, chief clinical officer at Katwe's health center, estimates that at least 10 percent of patients who come there are ill from working in Katwe's waters.

But there aren't many alternatives for the 10,000 people living by the lake. The earth yields few crops. Nearby is another lake, less salty, but it has few fish.

Salt has been harvested from Katwe for over 500 years and the methods have not changed.

"The water is poisonous to us but how can anyone refuse to go down there? What will we eat?" said Harriet Birungi. Aged 30, she has worked in the salt pans for half her life to support her five children. "Its very tiring work because we are bent all day. The back hurts, the ribs hurt and there are wounds as well."

Her 13-year-old daughter, on holiday from school, has been working in the salt pan for one week and already has pink circular wounds on her legs.

Fees paid by the salt miners got toward health care and schooling for the lakeside people, but there isn't enough to buy protective clothing, local officials say.

So for the thousands who rely on the lake for their income, poor health is simply a fact of life.

"I never knew the risks. I just came to work here because I knew I could make some money," says Mutwalhughuma. "If I knew then what I know now, I wouldn't have come."