This story was written by CuratEast as part of their engagement with IUCN through the BRIDGE Gender Grants Programme.
Our first stop in Sio Malaba, Busia, Uganda, brought us to Nalyoba Landing Site, a place where water is not just a resource, but history, culture, survival, and identity.
Before it was known as Nalyoba, the landing site was originally called “Omenya”, named after one of the oldest and most respected residents in the community. But since, the River Nalyoba was flowing downwards into the lake, slowly reshaping the identity of the place. Eventually, the landing site adopted the name Nalyoba a name derived from the local meaning “to flow.”
And like many places shaped by water, life here begins long before sunrise.
Women walk quietly toward the lake at dawn, carrying jerrycans and basins while the water is still calm. There is a belief among many in the community that early morning lake water is cleaner and safer before the day’s activities begin disturbing it.
All images are courtesy of CuratEast.
For generations, families here drank directly from the lake without boiling or treating the water.
“The lake raised our parents and grandparents. It kept them alive, so many still believe it will keep us safe too.”
But today, the lake is changing.
Climate change, pollution, and human activity have slowly altered the water that once sustained the community so purely. Along the shores, laundry is washed and soapy water flows back into the lake. Fish are cleaned and waste is poured into the same waters. Some sections are still used as toilets. The dependence on the lake remains immense, but the pressure placed on it has grown equally heavy.
This is where Uganda National Women’s Fish Organization (UNWFO) in support from IUCN’s Swiss funded Building River Dialogue and Governance Programme (BRIDGE) have become instrumental within these communities not only through sensitization and community engagement, but by empowering women to become “Water Champions” within their landing sites.
These women are now taking active roles in protecting the very waters their communities depend on. They are being trained to test and monitor water quality, identify environmental risks, encourage households to treat drinking water using Water Guard, reduce waste disposal into the lake, and promote cleaner surroundings for both community health and ecosystem preservation.
What makes this work especially powerful is that the women are no longer only participants in the fishing economy; they are becoming custodians of the lake itself carrying both indigenous knowledge and new environmental practices to safeguard these waters for future generations.
And despite all the challenges, the lake continues to sustain life.
At Nalyoba, nearly every household depends on the water in some way. Men head out onto the lake to fish, while women wait patiently along the shores for the day’s catch. Some fish is taken home for food, while much of it enters the local market economy through women traders who buy directly from the returning boats and sell at nearby markets.
The lake is also used for bathing, washing clothes, irrigation, and farming. Tomato gardens stretch along parts of the shoreline, fed by the same waters that provide fish and drinking water.
Women, traditionally, were never allowed onto fishing boats. Fishing itself was culturally viewed as a man’s responsibility, while women’s roles remained onshore waiting, receiving, processing, and trading the fish once the fishermen returned.
Interestingly, we noticed that many of the boats resting along the shores carried women’s names names like Mama Naghaki and Jaja Nakhone. In a space where women are traditionally not allowed to go onto the boats themselves, their names still travel across the water every single day. It felt symbolic of the quiet but undeniable significance women hold within the fishing community as caretakers, traders, mothers, providers, and the backbone of life around the lake.
The rhythm of life here revolves entirely around the lake.
And so do many of the community’s beliefs and traditions.
It was also impossible to ignore how much power the fishermen held within the fishing economy. The high dependency on men for fish supply can leave many women economically vulnerable, and in some cases, this has contributed to transactional sexual relationships as women try to secure reliable access to fish for trade and survival. It is one of the quieter realities within many fishing communities where livelihood, gender dynamics, and survival often intersect in deeply complex ways.
One of the traditions that was interesting to find out was a fisherman was never supposed to wash his hands with soap after catching fish or eating fish.
To outsiders, it may sound small. But here, it carried weight.
People believed the soap would wash away his blessing, his luck, and his relationship with the lake itself. Elders believed the soap symbolically stripped away the fisherman’s connection to the water, leaving him “rejected” by the lake.
And once the lake rejected you, the fish would disappear from your nets.
“You don’t wash away the lake from your hands.”
Many of these traditions, however, are slowly disappearing. Community members explained that with the rise of Christianity and changing lifestyles, several rituals once performed to bless new boats or seek protection and luck on the water are no longer practiced.
And alongside those cultural transitions, many also speak of another painful loss the disappearance of fish species that once defined the lake.
One of the lady Magaret Nansubuga who has lived in Nalyoba since 2005 remembers a time when Nalyoba was abundant with fish. Species like Haplochromines (Nkejje), Ngege Tilapia, Semutundu (large catfish), Lungfish locally known as Mamba, Male catfish, and Elephant-snout fish (Kasulubana) were once common catches.
Today, the reality looks very different.
The most commonly seen species now are Nile Perch (Mputa), Nile Tilapia (Ngege), and Mukene (small silver fish). And even these are no longer caught in the quantities they once were.
The decline is visible.
Community members link it to erosion, polluted runoff entering the lake, poor waste disposal practices, over-dependence on the ecosystem, and changing environmental conditions. Others quietly wonder whether the disappearance of old customs and traditional stewardship practices also played a role in disconnecting people from the lake they once revered so deeply.
What becomes clear while listening to these stories is that biodiversity loss is not just scientific data or environmental reporting. Here, it is personal. It affects food, income, culture, memory, and identity.
And this is what made Nalyoba such an important first stop for CuratEast.
Beyond documenting landscapes and activities, this journey became about listening deeply to communities whose lives are inseparable from nature. It became about understanding how environmental change quietly reshapes traditions, livelihoods, and entire ways of life.
Through the work being supported by IUCN, and implemented alongside organizations like Uganda National Women Fish Organisation (UNWFO), there is hope that the remaining ecosystem can still be protected. Efforts are being made to create cleaner, safer lake environments that allow fish breeding grounds to recover and biodiversity to slowly regenerate.
The hope is not only to protect what remains, but perhaps one day to see species that disappeared from these waters return home again.
At Nalyoba Landing Site, the lake still carries stories.
Stories of resilience. Stories of loss. Stories of women who wake before sunrise to fetch water from the same shores their grandmothers once stood on. Stories of fishermen navigating both tradition and survival. Stories of a changing ecosystem that urgently needs protection.
And through this journey, CuratEast continues to capture not just images or interviews, but the deeper meaning behind communities living at the intersection of women, water, culture, and biodiversity.
