The Community Walk In Ruhija Village

Ruhija village is located in South western Uganda in Bwindi Impenetrable Forest.  Of course this the park where gorilla trekking  takes place. The cultural and nature walk at  Ruhija will offer  you a great opportunity and chance to make a difference  from the activity of gorilla trekking  within the park. When you in the proximity of  Bwindi Impenetrable national park, you will ned to have a very relaxed and good breakfast from the lodge you might have spend your night the previous year. Then after be prepared to be picked by your guide from  the hotel from where you will be taken to start the Ruhija community cultural walk. This Ruhija walk will be awesome and interesting to you as you will visit many cultural features along this walk. During your  visit, you will visit the local Batwa community who live in Bwindi Impenetrable forest. These people are natives of this forest. At a time, they tried to bring them out of the forest and when this was done, they were becoming extinct. The main features to start with during your  Ruhija community trail will be to visit the local Batwa community who are traditionally lived in Bwindi forest . In Ruhija there is a community of around 18 Batwa and they have built up a spot where they show how they used to live in the forest. At this spot, they demonstrate their traditional dances, huts, fire making and hunting technique which is too interesting to hear. Since you are a visitor, you will be needed to  be translated a story  about how they had lived in the forest. At the end we were offered to try to shoot at a target with bow and arrow. A  Batwa man will show you how it’s done and made it look easy. From there, you will slowly journey up the steep hill from Batwa community and at the top there is a school for orphan and disadvantaged children. Walk around to say hi in the class rooms and expect a dance a dance performance from the pupils at a pay. The community walk in Ruhija takes between 2-3 hours depending on walking pace.

In addition to this, you will visit the Katwe salt community. This is in Queen Elizabeth National park. While here, you will experience how salt is extracted by the local community in the Katwe area and also you can involve yourself in the salt extracting process in this village.  The Katwe salt is located on the borders of Queen Elizabeth national park and the community walks .

You will greatly experience their way of living and the way how salt is harvested. People in this area have been making their living in this way for hundreds of years. During your tour around Katwe salt lake will let you see how the community works with salt harvesting Katwe and 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 which 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. At Katwe salt lake are not happy for rain, it is the sun that speeds up the evaporation and formation of salt as opposed to people working as farmers the people