AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
In communities up and down the shoreline of one of Africa's largest lakes, people have a lot to deal with, from hunger to homelessness. Now residents say a large oil project in the region is making life even more difficult. Willem Marx has our story.
JOYCE NYANDERA: (Non-English language spoken).
(LAUGHTER)
WILLEM MARX, BYLINE: Joyce Nyandera was born and raised in the Ugandan village of Kyabasambu. She married there, too, before becoming a mother and grandmother. Her life, she says, was good.
NYANDERA: (Through interpreter) We were well off. We were OK. We would fish. As people who live by the lake, the lake is our garden.
(SOUNDBITE OF RUSHING WATER)
MARX: But beneath that lake, called Albert, lies 1.4 billion barrels of thick crude oil.
NYANDERA: (Through interpreter) Once oil was discovered, they stopped us from fishing. We started suffering.
MARX: Nyandera's home lay right between two planned oil wells, part of a massive project by the Chinese National Offshore Oil Corporation - or CNOOC - one of two global oil giants hoping to extract oil from this region through the East African Crude Oil Pipeline. In May, 2019, she was given less than 24 hours to pack up before Ugandan police evacuated her entire village.
NYANDERA: (Through interpreter) There was a soldier standing along each house. A soldier - beatings, gunshots. We didn't know why we're evicted.
MARX: Nyandera's Congolese husband soon vanished, and she spent a year camping with her children in a nearby school before bravely returning to a flooded, looted home she's had to rebuild.
(SOUNDBITE OF MACHINERY WHIRRING)
MARX: Since then, CNOOC has started constructing those two oil wells very close by.
NYANDERA: (Through interpreter) The noise on its own - our ears are blowing up. When we speak, since they started working there, we just shout. You have to speak loud.
(SOUNDBITE OF MACHINERY WHIRRING)
MARX: The deafening work, lit by floodlights, often continues round the clock.
NYANDERA: (Through interpreter) We are only staying there because we have nowhere else to go.
MARX: In the nearby village of Sonzobi (ph), community health worker Mugisha Qaepher helps track illness among villagers.
(SOUNDBITE OF METAL BANGING)
MARX: A third oil well and a pipeline were built right in the middle of his community with loud equipment often passing his home.
MUGISHA QAEPHER: Those heavy machines - we have generator, and they are producing fumes, which are very harmful in our life.
MARX: These fumes get worse in hot weather, he says, alongside dust from dozens of site vehicles that pass daily along unpaved roads.
QAEPHER: (Non-English language spoken).
MARX: Qaepher says the nearest health clinic recently found this seems to be affecting people's health, especially children.
QAEPHER: The health workers have been collecting different sputum tests in our community. So it means the rate of coughing is a bit increasing.
MARX: Qaepher says CNOOC and its contractors told villagers the work sites, which can be as close as 130 feet from some homes, are a safe distance away. Local police checkpoints dot the roads across this region. Foreign journalists are unable to visit the villages and the local health clinics without a special government permit, which was not granted to NPR. CNOOC did not respond to requests for comment.
Snaking inland from the lake, yet another major project - a pipeline that will carry the crude oil across Uganda. Locals blame that project for several other new health problems. Hope Alinaitwe (ph) once grew avocados, mangoes and jackfruit. Most of her compensation money the pipeline project - EACOP - paid for her land went towards a motorcycle. She needed it to ferry her severely sick child to hospital once a month for treatment. Three months after she bought the bike, that child died.
Alinaitwe now fears for the future of her other kids who are no longer in school, for after EACOP purchased most of her land in 2018, she says she's been unable to farm her small remaining plot successfully. Failing crops and occasional fires were once a nuisance, but with far less land, they can reduce her food production to almost zero.
HOPE ALINAITWE: (Through interpreter) I am worried. When I think about it, I don't get sleep.
MARX: Alinaitwe says EACOP had assured locals like her they'd never suffer again, but she says the stress has significantly harmed her health.
ALINAITWE: (Through interpreter) I struggle with a hernia. I have heart complications. I struggle through the night. I have to find cold water and pour it on myself. If my heart isn't aching, it's the hernia that's burning and leaving me in pain.
MARX: EACOP told NPR that national legislation determined land compensation rates reflecting local market values and full replacement costs, and they said residents were not compelled to sign compensation deals. The company also said it was not aware of anyone who's, quote, "experienced health problems as a result of project activities." But like others we spoke to, Alinaitwe ties her ailment to the nearby oil developments.
There's currently little hard data on such health consequences in Uganda, but elsewhere - from Ecuador to Nigeria - such causation has been shown. Maria Lya Ramos at Oxfam works with local communities globally who were affected by large extractive projects like this.
MARIA LYA RAMOS: Around the world and certainly across Africa, where there are people living near oil facilities, there are negative impacts to public health and to their environment. Air and water pollution, oil spills, gas flaring, contamination of soil and fisheries can lead to respiratory illnesses, skin diseases, cancers and other chronic conditions.
MARX: In a region where many families' survival already hangs by a slim thread, villagers here say these multibillion-dollar oil projects seem to be fraying those threads even more.
For NPR News, I'm Willem Marx in Kijumba, Uganda.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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