Gertrude Arineitwe spreads out her green polythene bag at the charcoal shelter. The charcoal seller, a woman from whom Arineitwe has bought charcoal for the past four years and who has become a friend, empties a spadeful of charcoal into the bag. Black dust wafts in the air.
Soot-colored pieces fall into the bag, clanging as they land. Arineitwe watches, waiting for the seller to add more. But she doesn’t.
She’s done — and the bag is only half full. Every day for the last seven years, Arineitwe has bought charcoal to brew bushera, a popular drink made by mixing sorghum flour and hot water, then letting the mixture cool overnight. She sells it to people in her neighborhood, Nansana, a fast-growing suburb of Kampala, especially to those who hail from western Uganda where culturally the drink is a luxury in every home.
Typically, she uses two spadesful of charcoal — around 4,000 Ugandan shillings’ (1 United States dollar’s) worth — to make her day’s brew. But now the same 4,000 shillings buys only half the amount. She considered increasing her prices to compensate for the high fuel costs, she says, but her clients said they’d stop buying from her if she did.
Instead, she’s decreased her bushera production. And following last year’s ban on charcoal and firewood production in northern Uganda, which has driven prices even higher, she’s unsure what she’ll do for cooking fuel. “I am worried for the future of my business,” she says.
Over the past few year.