For the one feeling to break off the game-drive with a community visit the Katwe salt lake is an interesting option. Located at the border of Queen Elizabeth national park it is easy to include if time allows. Here the community make their living by harvesting salt from the lake. The people in this area have been making their living in this way for hundreds of years.
A tour around will let you see how the community works with salt harvesting at Katwe salt lake. From the lake they extract three products; blocks of rock salt, salt crystals that can be consumed by humans as table salt and a salty mud that is used for cattle to lick when it has been dried. To harvest the salt the people make saltpans (i.e. a salt evaporation pond) at the edges of the lake to intensify the evaporation and concentrate the salt. These can be seen as a patchwork around the lake and are owned by individuals in the same way as somebody would own a piece of land. As an opposite to people working as farmers the people at Katwe salt lake are not happy for rain, it is the sun that speeds up the evaporation and formation of salt. The salt products are harvested by hand and it is a tough as well as health hazardous job to stand in the salty water for hours without protective gear.
During a safari in July Tony together with a couple from USA went to visit the Katwe salt lake and here you can see what he documented.
