Confessions of a charcoal maker

Why irresponsible charcoal making is a number one threat to the environment. I travelled to Mwanza and got dazzled how so many trees are sacrificed just to produce few bags of charcoal.

Just seven years ago, the mountain standing to the west of Lohondo Village, T/A Kanduku, Mwanza, was covered in green. Today, it is completely bald. Rocks of varying sizes protrude from it as if gasping for fresh air.

As we walk towards it on a Thursday morning, dark smoke is seen spiralling profusely from a part of it.

“That means things are working there,” says Winess Maunde at the sight of the smoke.

The smoke is coming from a mound. It is a 15 by 10 metre heap of earth with trees being baked inside.

Located a 30-minute walk from his two-bedroomed house just below the mountain; the mound, he speaks in quite a relaxed way, is his site for charcoal production.

But though looking happy, the rigour of production weighs heavy on him and he does not like it.

“I should be honest with you; it is not easy to run this charcoal making business. I roasted these trees three days ago, but that is just a part of the process,” explains Maunde, while puffing his cigarette.

“It all begins with a journey into a forest to get the trees. You need big and fleshy ones to produce quality charcoal. Such trees, unfortunately, are very far these days—you can see that there is hardly a forest close by. We have destroyed them all.

“So we travel distances to get the desired trees. I usually spend almost a day there, and another one for transferring the cut tree branches to the production site. So you can see there that I have two hectic days just to get trees.

“For the production underway here, I cut down 18 sizeable trees which I sliced into manageable branches for burning. The bad thing is that you don’t need the entire tree. Sometimes, the best part of it is left,” he says.

Of course, it’s not that every round demands 18 trees. Maunde argues that it depends on the type of the trees you find in the forest and the size of your mound.

“When your mound is big, it means you need more trees. I know friends with big mounds which demand close to 60 trees or so; sometimes it is less than that when they find bigger trees,” adds Maunde.

After the process of chopping the trees is done, the burning begins.

“It is one tough job, time consuming and challenging,” continues Maunde, showing his dark, hard and cracked palms. His eyes are red and the entire body unusually dark.

“You need to make sure that the tree branches are arranged in a way that they all catch the bake. When the arranging is done, we light the fire, bury the trees with earth—the baking begins. This, of course, is the first day.

“It takes five to six days for the trees to turn into charcoal. However, this does not suggest that after the first day, you have to patiently wait at home. You need to be here [at the production site] everyday monitoring the process.

“You need to ensure that the smoke is not just continuous but also coming from the right channel, otherwise your product will not be up to the standard,” he explains.

In a month, Maunde burns trees at his mound twice. Each round gives him an average of 10 bags, which means he produces 20 bags of charcoal.

“I am both a producer and a seller. I am not like others who only produce and wait for middlemen to buy them at wholesale price. I take the products to the market myself.

“During the rainy season, a bag of charcoal, at least, fetches better. It goes at around K1 000. But during the dry season, it goes for as low as K400. But at least we are able to meet our daily needs from this,” says 40-year-old Maunde, who has a wife and seven children.

The man—who confessed to have never planted or participated in a tree planting exercise—cuts down an average of 36 sizeable trees per month to produce about 20 bags of charcoal.

In a year, it follows then, Maunde cuts down an average of 432 trees to survive.

The tragedy of it all is not just the fact that Maunde started earning a living on charcoal when he was 12. Rather, it is the large-scale at which most households in Mwanza rely on charcoal making as their main source of livelihood. It is practised by hundreds.

So, how many trees then are being cut by all the households that share Maunde’s story? Is it surprising, therefore, to see most mountains in Mwanza and Neno districts bald?

The quickest search for options to save the environment from this mass deforestation points to common, old strategies: the need to plant more trees and empower charcoal making communities with alternative means of generating income.

But with unchecked birth rates, is this viable and sustainable?