fishing village | johnageddes

Rusinga Island, on the shore of Lake Victoria, is off the beaten path for development and in a very poor region of Nyanza Province, Kenya. The people in lakeshore beach villages rely on fishing for their meagre incomes and the population of the villages fluctuates with the season. Declining fish stocks in Lake Victoria and lowering sale prices for their catch has made living conditions difficult for these people.

Kaswanga Beach – Rusinga Island, Kenya

The CanAssist African Relief Trust has been looking to improve sanitation in four of these lakeside commnities. The villages may have a population of between 100 and 400 inhabitants throughout the year and have had no toilets or washing facilities. Bathing has been done in the lake where there was no privacy and near the same region where household water was drawn for both cleaning and even drinking. The fields near the village were makeshift night toilets and became both contaminated and a health hazard. When it rained, fecal contamination was washed into the lake close to the bathing/water retrieval areas. This, of course, provided a significant health hazard for diarrheal diseases like typhoid and cholera.

CanAssist has been working through the Badilisha Ecovillage Foundation on the island to improve this situation.

VIP (Ventilated Improved Pit) latrines and a washing room at the Kaswanga Beach community.

We built latrines at four of these villages around the island. Although four stalls may not really seem adequate to serve the population of the village, these are four more than zero and the communities are grateful for their addition. The fields adjacent to the villages are much cleaner. Fecal contamination no longer is washed into the lake near the village where water for drinking, washing and cleaning is gathered.

The communities have also asked for washing facilities so that they can have some privacy when cleaning themselves and also discourage contamination of their water supply with detergents and soaps. Last year, assisted by a specific donation from the Mission Committee of St.Peter’s Cathedral in London, Ontario, CanAssist built two washing rooms with cement floors, four private stalls with doors and drainage into a grey-water underground pit.

I visited the Kaswanga Village in February (see the movie trailer here! and was assured that these improvements, which may seem rudimentary and even crude to the North American reader, were making a grand difference to the people who live there.

The treasurer of the Beach Management Unit smiled and added ” If we could get a water pump to bring water from the lake to a raised tank near the washing facility it would be warmed in the sun and we could have warm showers.”

Some things that we just take for granted are deemed luxuries to many African villagers.

Osiri village is a 15 minute walk from the Luanda ferry dock that takes me to Mbita town. It is a small fishing village with a population of about 500. The people there struggle with poverty and the unfortunate lack of adequate clean water and sanitation.

Osiri fishermen

I was introduced to the community through Meshack Andiwo, a fellow who as had the opportunity for a bit more education than most there. He indicated that the community was concerned about the children not getting any schooling. It is near this village that CanAssist has built the Stewart Geddes School. Fishing had been the main source of income for people in the village but this is becoming more challenging for a number of reasons.

Firstly, as in the rest of lake Victoria, the fish stocks are being depleted. Nile perch were introduced to the lake in the 1950’s as a potential source of fishing income. This was both a blessing and a curse as these fish have a voracious appetite and have consumed many of the smaller species in the lake, upsetting the ecological balance. They can grow to be very large. Nile perch caught in the lake are packed in ice and taken to a larger city, Kisumu or Nairobi, for filleting and shipping to Europe.

Day catch of Nile Perch. These four fish weighed 38.5 kg.

Although the price that the fishermen can get for the fish has fallen, it is still an income. So the people who live here are forced to sell the fish and go without. Despite being close to this nutritious food source, they can not afford to keep the fish which end up in European markets.

Another introduced species that is causing problems in the bay is Water Hyacinth. You may know this as the lettuce-like floating plant on ornamental garden ponds in Canada. They sell for $4-$5 each in garden centers in May and June. They have a nice purple flower and spread out over the pond only to be frozen at the first frost.

Somehow, this native of South America entered the Lake Victoria system in the 1980’s and since then, they have rapidly taken over. Millions of them float in clumps or even large islands in the lake, being blown around by the wind and currents. Although they may shelter the fish in some ways, the fishermen have trouble with their nets brewing caught up in the rafts of plants and when a large crop blows in to the shore at the village, it makes landing or launching a boat impossible.

Water hyacinth floating on the lake.

They also act as a breeding ground for mosquitoes, thus increasing the spread of malaria and dengue fever.

I told the folks here that the poverty problem in their community could be solved if they could just sell these plant pests to North Americans and Europeans for their backyard ponds. Another inequitable obscenity, when you think about it very much.

This unventilated latrine is the only toilet for the 500 people living in Osiri village.

There are few households with any toilet and most of the people in the community either use the bush or one small latrine found near the centre of the village. They collect their water from the lake but the lake is becoming increasingly polluted with sewage, laundry detergents and other effluents. Many do not boil or purify their water before consuming it as this takes time and money or consumes scrounged firewood that is needed for other cooking.

Kids swim in the lake and others bathe there. Many are infected with bilharzla, a parasitic fluke that can infest kidneys and bowel.

Despite these challenges, the people who live in Osiri Village are cheerful and optimistic and my visit to the community and the Stewart Geddes school was heart-warming.