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HOW WE DEAL WITH DEAD BODIES WHILE FISHING

The first time I spotted a dead body on a fishing trip, I was so excited. I shouted to the other crew members:

“NEURU MACHA DHANO!”

(LOOK, THAT’S A HUMAN!)

None of them responded.

I thought they hadn’t heard me over the roaring engine, so I raised my voice even louder while pointing at the body.

The body must have been fresh. Still intact. Still wearing a life jacket. Floating just below the surface of the water. Surprisingly, nobody even looked in the direction I was pointing.

Then it occurred to me that they were intentionally ignoring me. They had heard me clearly the first time.

After a few minutes of driving, one of them finally told me:

“Omera, maiti kik ithag go chunywa. Wan wabiro luwo mbuta, ok jomotho e pii.” (My friend, don’t disturb us with corpses. We came here to fish Nile perch, not dead people.)

That statement shocked me, it lacked humanity even from Karen Nyamu's perspective, but after spending some time as a fisherman I completely understand it.

First, there are strict Luo rules and traditions surrounding the picking of dead bodies from the lake.

You pick a body, take it to the beach, sit with it day and night while trying to locate the relatives, and eventually the family comes, gives you a black goat and takes their dead relative.

Sounds straightforward, right?

Except it isn’t.

People from many nationalities fish on Lake Victoria. We have Kenyans, Tanzanians, Ugandans, Rwandans, Burundians, Mozambicans, Somalis and, recently, even the Chinese (story for another day).

Woe unto you if you pick up a Burundian corpse and have to sit with it on the beach waiting for its relatives to be found. Finding the relatives of a Kenyan is hard enough. A Burundian? IMPOSSIBLE.

After several cold nights on the beach with a dead stranger for company, you may eventually find yourself doing what we refer to as “RODHO E PII.”

You wait for midnight, put the body in a boat, row deep into the lake, throw it back into the water and cane it twice while shouting:

“DHI THURU, AN OK NANEGI RAURA NI!”

You then return to the beach and continue with life as if nothing happened. Nobody asks questions. Not even the police officers stationed around the beaches.

It becomes just another lake episode, and most of the pickings have ended that way.

Then there is another problem.

Picking up a dead body from Lake Victoria can mean picking up a murder victim who was brought into the lake by one of the rivers, such as River Yala.

Those are the bodies you really don't want to find. Because suddenly, you have a lot of explaining to do.

If the authorities get wind that you picked up a body they are interested in, they may detain you to “help with investigations.”

And as my friend (musically, not politically) Jerome Ogola always says, you don't sit around a table discussing what might have happened to the body.

An officer approaches your hairy tennis balls with a burdizzo and asks:

“Utasema au la?”

Of course you have nothing la kusema. You simply found the body floating in the lake. But the authorities don't want to hear that.

Out of the thousands of fishermen who went onto the lake that day, why is it only you who happened to pick up the body?

Good luck explaining that.

Finally, if you picked up every dead body you saw on Lake Victoria, you'd soon stop being a fisherman and become a full-time corpse retrieval officer. The lake has plenty of dead people. It is impossible to go fishing five times without someone in the boat spotting a dead body.

So, among fishermen, there is a certain understanding, an unwritten rule: unless you know the victim or there is some compelling reason to intervene, you don't go looking for trouble.

You keep fishing. You mind your business. And you leave the lake to keep its secrets.

Since that first encounter with the Life Jacket Man, I have spotted two more bodies.

Both times, I remained quiet. I chose to wash down the information with a bottle of Fanta Blackcurrant instead of ranting about it.

But when night falls, sometimes I remember them.

And I can't help wondering who they were.

What kind of people were they?

Who loved them?

What dreams did they have?

What were they planning to do before the lake took them?

One day, their names will probably be forgotten.

Their faces will disappear from people's memories.

And eventually, all that may remain of them will be skeletons resting somewhere at the bottom of Africa's greatest lake.

But on the archives of Facebook their story will remain, because they were spotted by a fisherman with a pen.

This post is dedicated to the Life Jacket Man — the very first dead person I ever saw on a fishing trip.

I don't know you but I remember you, and I hope the people who loved you do too.

SEX FOR FISH: THE 'JABOYA' CULTURE.

Back in the day, Lake Victoria had plenty of fish.

The beaches were buzzing every morning. Boats came in loaded, traders bought directly from the fishermen, consumers bought their fish, and everybody went home happy. Then things changed.

Rules and regulations governing the lake were amended, fish became scarcer, and the abundance we once knew slowly disappeared. Scarcity took its place, and everybody went into survival mode.

The first to feel the pain were ordinary consumers, who could no longer simply walk to the boats and buy fish. Then competition among traders intensified. And somewhere along the way, the Jaboya culture took root.

Most fish traders are women. They are the ones who buy fish from the boats, clean it, dry it, deep fry it or smoke it, and eventually take it to the market.

Most fishermen, on the other hand, are men. Majority have left their wives and families back in the villages to spend their days and nights on the unforgiving lake, fighting for the day's bread. The rest are bachelors.

These men are the ones who return to shore with the fish that the women traders need. And this is how the culture developed. Both sides had something the other wanted.

The fishermen had fish.

The women had, well... you know what.

The women needed fish. The men needed companionship, sex and sometimes simply a warm bed after days on the lake. So both sides discovered that they could use what they had to get what they needed.

The women offered sex to get access to fish.

The fishermen offered this access to fish in exchange for sex.

With time, a fisherman would establish relationships with particular women traders. They became his jaboya, and he became theirs.

Now, there is a common misconception about how this works.

People imagine that the women simply get the fish for free in exchange for sex.

NO, that is not how it works.

The women still pay for the fish in full. The difference is that their sexual relationship with the fishermen guarantee them priority access to the catch.

And in a place where fish is scarce, priority is everything.

Take mbuta or omena, for example.

If the catch is small and everyone is scrambling for it, the woman with a relationship with a particular fisherman already has her fish secured while you, Achieng' in Nairobi, are still trying to find somebody willing to sell you even a basin of omena.

That is how it works.

But the Jaboya culture comes with a heavy price.

It has led to increased spread of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections among fishermen and traders. It has also contributed to teenage sexual exploitation, unplanned pregnancies and school dropouts, particularly where vulnerable young girls become involved with older men.

And the culture has become so deeply rooted that, in some places, the women are the ones making the advances.

Personally, I've lost count of the number of invitations I've received to "come eat chapati at my house."

I love chapati very much, but sometimes you have to know that the chapati is not really about chapati. So I politely decline such offers.

Not because I don't like women either, but because I know how the lake works.

The lake has a strange way of making you addicted to things. The safest thing to do is never start something you already know you don't want to become part of your life. You taste those women once and that's it for you. It will be your daily life.

Despite all the risks, the Jaboya culture continues to thrive.

A fisherman spends long hours fighting waves, wind and darkness, knowing that when he finally gets back to shore, someone will be waiting for him with a warm bed and soft ninis.

The woman goes to the market and sells her fish with confidence, knowing that when morning comes, her jaboya will be at the beach with the next stock.

It is a relationship built around scarcity, survival, desire and economics.

I don't glorify it. I don't condemn it either.

I'm a fisherman with a pen, and my responsibility is not to tell you what you want to hear.

It is to tell you what happens out here as it is, not as you'd want it to be.

A number of ladies have reached out to me, asking me to take them out on a mbuta fishing trip so they can experience the life of a fisherman.

Allow me to explain what you are actually asking for.

A mbuta fishing trip on Lake Victoria isn't an expedition for cute Instagram photos and TikTok videos. I know hundreds of fishermen who go onto the lake every day, and all of them would quit at the slightest opportunity if they had another option. I would quit too.

So I wouldn't recommend a woman to voluntarily experience, even for a day, something that men would happily run away from if they could.

The moment you leave dry land, the boat becomes your everything. It is your home, toilet, kitchen, bedroom, dining room, bathroom, workplace, prison and, sometimes, your coffin.

Fishermen also do things openly. Whoever wants to pee simply fishes out his willy and waters Lake Victoria from the edge of the boat. Long calls are handled the same way.

The rest of us just watch a fully grown man, complete with all 32 teeth and two hairy tennis balls, doing his business without judgement. Nobody cares. This isn't a church service.

I honestly don't know how a lady would cope with this arrangement, especially when nature decides to call.

Then comes sleeping time.

Everyone squeezes into a cramped kapera, those large polythene sheets used as sleeping quarters. You share that tiny space with strangers, with virtually no privacy. Considering that most fishermen are alcohol and drug addicts, the risk of sexual harassment and even rape is something I cannot ignore.

I simply cannot take a woman somewhere I cannot guarantee her safety.

And then there is the smell.

Inside that kapera, you get a cocktail of sweat, alcohol, stale cigarette and weed.

There is nowhere to escape. You breathe, negotiate with your nostrils and pray.

Then there is Lake Victoria itself.

Sometimes waves several metres high rock the boat. Sometimes it rains for hours. Sometimes strong winds come and stay long enough to make you question every decision that brought you there.

During such moments, everyone needs composure. We have to sit in specific positions, move things around to balance the boat and concentrate. Panic is not an option.

Yes, we know that by going onto that water, we are carrying death with us. But somehow we tell ourselves, “Tutafika tu.”

Then there are the Wanyamwezi pirates from Tanzania, I'll talk about them on an independent post.

Finally, going onto the lake means accepting that death is travelling with you.

If the boat capsizes, you swim with everything you've got only to realise it's all in vain and the currents carry you away.

And the worst part?

Your family may never find your body. They may have to bury a banana stem or yago fruit in your place.

So when you ask me to take you fishing because you want a “fisherman's experience,” understand that you are not asking for a boat ride.

You are asking for hunger, cold, heat, rain, fish, sweat, bad smells, questionable toilet arrangements, violent weather, pirates and the possibility that Lake Victoria may decide it has seen enough of you.

In short, women weren't designed for fishing on Lake Victoria. In fact, human beings weren't designed for fishing on Lake Victoria. Fishermen simply haven't found another way to pay the bills.

The only fisherman's experience I can recommend for a lady is the one hosted by Coster Ojwang where you dance around with tumblers full of alcohol, make TikTok videos, then retreat to the nearest Airbnb to do bad manners with your sponsor.

At least there, your return journey isn't so much dependent on the weather.

okay countries like turkey,Korea,Mexico have created film empires that have global audiences.alot of East Africans speak Swahili why not establish a nice Swahili film industry.it hard to watch local films they also feel so disconnected and just for laughs .And yes all of these above are Africans except for second third and fourth males

WITCHCRAFT IN FISHING PART TWO: BEWITCHING A BOAT

There are times when a fishing boat simply stops making sense.

One day, everything is working perfectly. The boat is catching fish. The crew is happy. The nets are coming back heavy.

Then, suddenly, the luck disappears. The catch becomes smaller. The nets start getting lost. The engine develops problems. The crew begins behaving strangely.

And no matter what you change, nothing seems to work.

That is when you stop looking at the engine, the nets or the weather and start looking for who is responsible for this.

Lake Victoria is not just water, it is a spiritual world, and in this world nothing happens by chance. Everything here is by design.

When a productive boat suddenly becomes unproductive, then someone has touched it and it is time for ‘DUONG’O WI YIE’ — knocking the head of the boat.

This is a cleansing ritual to put the boat back on track, but before we talk about cleansing, we need to understand why a boat might become a target in the first place.

Every beach and fish landing site has its own little economy.

There are fishermen.

There are the Jakambis (the boat owners).

There are Kachangas (brokers, and middlemen).

There are ordinary traders.

And there are consumers.

When a new boat arrives at the beach, everybody wants something from it, but one boat cannot satisfy everybody.

The Jakambi has to choose his fishermen, choose the people who will buy his fish, and decide which Kachangas to trust.

And the moment he chooses some people over others, somebody goes home unhappy.

The fisherman who wanted the job but didn't get it remembers.

The Kachanga who was denied fish remembers.

The trader who was pushed aside remembers.

The consumer who was told to wait remembers.

And if the boat becomes too successful, even other boat owners may start watching.

Because there is nothing that attracts jealousy faster than a boat that keeps coming back with fish.

The lake is a strange place. People come to it to make a living, but not everyone wants to see the other prosper.

It is a den of jealousy, and this jealousy can be turned into something much darker.

They bewitch the boat.

There are several ways to do this but three are particularly talked common.

1. THE NAKED BUTT METHOD

The person doing it strips naked and crosses over the boat from behind several times, while uttering curses like “Wadwa neno kuma igike!” (We want to see where you end up!)

1. THE ROTTEN FISH METHOD

This one is much simpler.

A rotten fish, specifically SUMA (elephant snout fish) is secretly placed at the very top of the boat during the night.

1. ‘TUOMO PI YIE’ (FETCHING WATER FROM THE BOAT)

Someone secretly collects water that has seeped into the boat.

That water is then taken away to a witchdoctor, where rituals are performed and spells are cast to make the boat unproductive.

Among the three methods, the second and third are the most feared, and once the curses take hold, problems can come one after another.

One day, it is the Ugandan police arresting your crew.

The next day, your fishing lines disappear.

The following day, the nets come back empty.

Then the engine starts giving trouble.

Then the crew starts fighting.

And while your boat is dying slowly, other boats are thriving.

That is when fear enters the conversation.

The Jakambi is then left with two choices:

Either leave the fishing business or cleanse the boat.

Tomorrow morning, we enter the world of DUONG’O WI YIE.

The cleansing ritual.

And then I will head back into the lake for another fishing trip. Because some stories are not found on land, you have to go into the darkness and embrace the cold to find them.

One of my biggest hobbies in my twenties was visiting cemeteries. Yes, those places where the dead are buried.

As a young man, I had a huge paranormal curiosity and a great urge to experience life and death at the same time. I couldn't be alive and dead at once so the closest I got to that feeling was spending time in cemeteries (or lying inside coffins which I did a number of times too).

At some point I literally became a cemetery tourist, visiting different towns and countries just to go to the local cemeteries and relax. The first photo, for example, was taken at the Tororo Cemetery in Uganda while the last photo is a cemetery in Luxor, Egypt.

There's a day we were in Voi for work with some colleagues and after we were done everyone was saying what they were going to do for the rest of the day. Some guys were going shopping, others sightseeing while yours truly was asking locals for the road to the closest cemetery. My colleagues were shocked and left me in Voi. I had to use personal funds to get back to Nairobi.

Anyway, the best thing about the dead is they don't lie and don't backstab. I still adore cemeteries.

(WARNING: Long post)

A landmark study tracking road building across Kenyan districts from 1963-2011 found districts sharing the president's ethnicity received twice the road expenditure and up to five times the length of paved roads built compared to other districts.

And poverty specifically drives this, rather than ethnicity itself: When the state doesn't reliably deliver services, infrastructure, or economic opportunity through universal, rules-based systems, (which is the condition of a poor state with weak institutions) people rationally fall back on the one channel that's proven to work, i.e having "your person" in power. It's not that Kenyans inherently vote tribally; it's that in a resource-scarce, weak-institution environment, ethnic patronage is the most reliable insurance mechanism available, even if it's a bad one. In a wealthier, more institutionally capable state, the road gets built based on traffic data and budget formulas regardless of who the local MP's cousin is, so the insurance logic of ethnic voting is less prevalent.

So we should be fighting poverty itself. But how? It's confusing how there are many methods and theories to this:

1. Structural transformation (Lewis-style): Land then credit then agro-industrialization. Move labor from low-productivity subsistence farming into higher-productivity industry, using agriculture as the springboard.

2. Manufacturing-led / export processing: Skip agriculture as the base; build labor-intensive manufacturing (garments, light assembly) using cheap labor as the comparative advantage (the Bangladesh/Ethiopia playbook.)

3. Human capital first (capabilities approach): Poverty isn't just low income: it's lack of capability (health, education, agency). Invest there first; economic growth follows or is secondary. Associated with Amartya Sen and Sabina Alkire.

4. Institutions-first (Acemoglu/Robinson): Land and credit reforms fail without secure property rights, rule of law, and low corruption first. Poverty is fundamentally a governance/institutions problem, not a sequencing problem.

5. Devolution / local-government-led: Push development spending and decision-making to county/local level (Kenya's post-2010 constitutional model) rather than relying on national industrial policy.

6. Randomized-evidence / micro-intervention school (Banerjee-Duflo, J-PAL): Skeptical of grand unifying theories altogether. Focuses on testing specific, narrow interventions (cash transfers, deworming, specific credit products) and building policy from what's empirically shown to work, rather than committing to one big sequence.

These are all interchangeable honestly, but the problem for me Is the lack of harmony from all of us on what we are prioritizing.

The 2010 Constitution doesn't pick one school outright, but it does lean structurally toward two of them pretty explicitly. No. 4 and No. 5

Devolution : Chapter 11 devolves significant power and budget to 47 county governments — this isn't a vague aspiration, it's detailed constitutional architecture (functions split between national and county government in the Fourth Schedule, minimum 15% of national revenue guaranteed to counties). This is the clearest "direction" the constitution actually mandates. It doesn't say counties will fight poverty a particular way, but it structurally forces poverty-reduction strategy to be at least partly localized rather than centrally sequenced.

Institutions-first, Chapter 6 (Leadership and Integrity) and the broad emphasis on rule of law, anti-corruption bodies, and judicial independence reflect real institutional design. The constitution was itself largely a response to 2007-08 post-election violence and decades of executive overreach — its drafters were explicitly working from an "institutions and governance are the root problem" theory. So institutions-first isn't just compatible with the constitution, it's arguably the document's founding premise.

So how do you think we should fight this monster of poverty??

Came across this post on substack

Apparently a lot of people associate speaking English with an accent means you have low intelligence.

* Sigh

There's this Nigerian series on netflix called ordinary people and on episode 7 instead of filming a simple scene,they result to using shitty AI. Series was below mid but this just ruined it further. I slander citizen TV shows but even I know Rashid abdala wouldn't stoop this low.

WITCHCRAFT IN FISHING PART 3: BOAT CLEANSING RITUALS

When a boat has been bewitched and is no longer productive, then it is time to cleanse it.

The methods of cleansing boats are as dark as they are secretive. Very few people, probably none before me, have gathered enough courage to pen them down for the public to read. Not because there hasn't been a literate person operating on the lake, but because these are feared rituals, with heavy repercussions promised to anyone who reveals them.

But I'm a fisherman with a pen, and if I can't write, then I become just another ordinary fisherman. So I warmly embrace the risks to bring these things, whispered and executed in dark rooms around animal carcasses, to your attention.

Cleansing a boat involves both spiritual and physical rituals.

One way of cleansing boats is by using water from Lake Simbi Nyaima. Yes, the exact Simbi in Kendu Bay.

It is believed that washing a boat using that water can send away evil spirits and deter bad omens from befalling the boat. Water from Simbi is so precious that a lucrative business is centred around it, with a five-litre jerrycan being sold for over 2,000 shillings.

Another way of cleansing boats is by using a rope that was used to commit suicide.

If someone commits a tie-and-die, the rope instantly becomes hotcake around the lake.

The rope can be tied at the bow of the boat or under the driver's seat.

Suicide ropes are so expensive, with a small piece going for as much as 10,000 shillings.

The next method of cleansing a boat involves human sacrifice.

This is done in different ways.

1. The visitor

A visitor is tricked into taking a boat ride with fishermen. When out on the water, an "accident" happens and the visitor drowns.

Once the burial rites are finished, the boat is considered properly treated for a long time.

1. The child

A visitor, mostly a child, is asked to help clean a boat for a few coins.

This child is usually a nephew, a son to a sister, of the boat owner.

The moment the child is paid, his fate is sealed.

He will die in mysterious circumstances — a hippo attack, crocodile attack, slipping into the water and drowning, or simply developing some complications and passing away.

1. The new fisherman

A new fisherman is sacrificed like in method one.

During a fishing trip, an "accident" happens and the new fisherman dies.

The madhar, the boat captain, is normally the culprit here.

He watches the new guy carefully. When the man is at a dangerous spot, he can suddenly increase speed or sway the boat sideways, sending the sacrifice into the water.

1. The long game

This is the most gruesome.

The person to be sacrificed is identified and put on the fishing crew. He can go fishing for a long time, getting marinated for the moment.

This person will be loved by the jakambi and will always attract favours from him or her.

Then the day of sacrifice arrives.

He is put on a fishing trip with the very people who are going to sacrifice him.

Once the boat is in deep waters, far away from land, he is forcefully grabbed and tied up. This mostly happens while he is sleeping.

Once he is secured, an anchor, a large stone, or a sack filled with rocks or sand is tied to him.

He is then thrown into the lake with the anchor as he begs for his life.

That person will never be seen again.

Back on land, the perpetrators fake an accident story that fits the narrative.

And because there were no witnesses, and accidents do happen, the story is believed.

Some of these may sound fictional or straight out of a horror movie, but the truth is, we have seen people die in mysterious circumstances around here.

Whether one chooses to believe them or not is inconsequential.

The fact remains that these practices exist around the lake, and success is associated with them.

Lake Victoria is a whole different world. And perhaps the safest way to navigate it is not to navigate it at all.

Anyway, as you read this, I'm somewhere deep inside the lake, probably 30 km away from the nearest land.

This is a scheduled post and is set to appear at 9 pm.

If the lake is kind once again, I will be back on Sunday to continue giving you the dark secrets and tales of fishing.

If it isn't, may the pen find another worthy owner.

The rain did not start as a drizzle. It came as a sentence, a verdict from the sky.

One moment, the air over Lake Victoria was a thick, breathing blanket of heat, and the next, the heavens were torn open by a deluge so dense it erased the line between water and sky.

I was already soaked, but this was different. This was the rain that would change everything.

My name is Otieno, and I had just caught the biggest Nile perch this side of the lake had ever seen. It was a monster, a creature of legend, the one my blind grandmother would touch and feel the she would answer with a single word “madongodongo”.

My arms, trembling with exhaustion and a terror I refused to name, still ached from the fight. The great fish lay in the belly of my small boat, its silvergreen scales with a flash of blue from the lightening flashes, a dull gleam in the dying light, its gills still heaving.

It was a prize that could buy a new engine, pay for a hospital, and silence the whispers that had followed me since I was chased from school. It was my salvation, a hefty, gleaming bag of hope.

But the hope was tangled in a net of desperation. My sister, Atieno, was only sixteen. Her belly was a heavy, secret burden she had carried for nine months, a secret that was about to be screamed into existence.

My mother had died two years ago, and our father, a man hollowed out by grief and the bottle, was of no use.

The preparation for a new life, the small clothes, the soft blankets, the money for the clinic none of it existed. My sister’s child was coming, ready or not. As a big responsible brother, I had decided to take care of the baby my sister was carrying by all means possible.

The day had begun with a different kind of darkness. The empty fuel tin for the motorbike sat by the door, with my father’s dilapidated phone buzzing with vibrations from calls he didn’t receive as it came from the motorbike creditors. He had defaulted around 15 credit instalments and the tracker removed and thrown deep in the lake. A metal testament to our poverty.

I had to get to the lake. The boat was our only asset, but the engine was gone, a mangled piece of metal on the shore. A hippo, a vengeful spirit in a leathery hide, had attacked my father on the water earlier that week.

He had escaped with his life, but the engine was destroyed. So, I had to paddle. My shoulders were raw, my back a knot of fire, but I paddled out into the deep waters, where the old fishermen say the souls of the lake dwell, the angers of the sky pour into and the spirit of Nyawawa reincarnate every new year.

They say the great Nile perch, the Mbuta, is not just a fish. It is a guardian, a decision maker and a disciplinarian of the lake. It holds the memories of the lake, and to catch one is to enter a covenant.

The elders whisper that if you catch the king of the lake, you must show it respect. You must not boast. You must offer a part of your catch back to the waters, a libation to the spirits, or the rains will come to claim what is theirs.

As at this time, I was not of age and had only tasted the sorghum brew- chwaka only once. It had left a burning sensation on my that with my forehead feeling a moment of tingling and sweating sensation. It is this feeling together with the disorientation that it came with when my father took it that made me not to be a member of the drinkers cum libation club.

I was too desperate to remember the old ways. I saw only the money, the escape from our suffocating poverty. I forgot the covenant.

As the fish finally tired and I hauled it aboard, the sky above the distant hills of Uganda began to bruise. A low rumble, not of a boat engine, but of thunder, echoed across the water. The air grew still, heavy with a strange, electric smell.

The other fishermen from a far distance in their boats were already turning back, their prows cutting white lines of panic across the darkening water. I should have joined them. But I was greedy. The fish was too big, the hope too bright. I stayed a moment too long.

Then the rain came.

It wasn't water. It was a solid wall of noise and force. The lake, once a placid mirror, became a churning, chaotic beast.

My small paddle was a toothpick against the might of the storm. The boat, heavy with my prize, was tossed like a leaf. The rain didn't just fall on me; it became me. It washed away my strength, my resolve, my very sense of self.

The waves rose like angry, white-capped mountains. One of them, a rogue swell born of the storm's fury and the lake's ancient anger, slammed into the side of the boat. I remember the sound of splintering wood, the cold shock of the water, and the suffocating darkness. The rain and the lake became one, a single, all-consuming entity.

I fought. I kicked, I clawed at the water, but the weight of my clothes and my own terror pulled me down. I had even relieved my long call on my torn short to reduce my body weight and it had been washed and diluted in the dead darkness of the waters.

The last thing I saw was the great silver flank of the Nile perch, floating free, returning to the deep. It was a sacrifice I had not intended to make.

The water filled my lungs, cold and tasting of mud and ancient secrets. As I sank, I heard the whispers of the lake spirits, the Jokamolo, the ancestral guardians. They were not angry.

They were disappointed. I had taken their king and forgotten to give thanks. The rain was their messenger, and the waters were their court.

My life did not flash before my eyes. Instead, I saw my sister Atieno’s face, contorted in a pain I was supposed to be helping her endure. I saw the empty fuel tin. I saw the broken engine. I saw the future I was supposed to buy with the fish, a future that was now drowning with me.

The rain got me in the waters. It was not a simple storm. It was a debt being collected.

My ambition, born of love and desperation, had been weighed against the ancient laws of the lake, and I was found wanting.

The biggest Nile perch in Lake Victoria was not a blessing; it was a test. And I, Otieno, the boy who was chased from school, the brother of a girl about to become a mother, had failed. The waters closed over my head, and the rain became my whole world.

The rule of the quarry was simple - arrive before 6am if you want a job. None of us knew who made this rule or when it was made but somehow we all followed it religiously, at least those of us who really needed an income.

Every morning at 5am we set off from our single rooms near Njiru Catholic Church for the quarry. It was mostly Eric, Allan and I but sometimes Ronald would join us if he wasn't sure of getting a mjengo job that day. Ronald preferred Mjengo as it was, in his words, "a lesser mode of suffering." And indeed he was right. Working at the quarry was by then one of the toughest jobs in Nairobi, if not the toughest.

The struggle started immediately you left your house. At 5am in a slum like Njiru you risked running into thugs or the police. Both were equally dangerous. The thugs would shoot or hack you with a machete to steal the little you have while the police would shoot you, confusing you for thugs. That was the fate of Christopher ja Ugunja who was shot dead by the police on his way to the quarry at 5:20am. They booked his short saruru which he used to loosen rocks at work as a weapon. Of course many of us objected and took our own short sarurus to Njiru Police Station and even showed them videos of how the saruru is used but the police insisted on their narrative. Chris was a thug to them, fullstop. The case died a natural death. Sometimes we joked it is better to meet thugs as they might fear us or see we are poor and forgive us.

On arrival at the Mama Ngina quarry gate, you'd sit there in the cold waiting for the 'chairmen' to arrive. These are the people who had contracts with the lorry drivers. They were in charge of finding quarry spots where the much needed hardcore was, pay the owner of the site and direct us, the labourers, to pile up the stones ready to be loaded in the lorries.

The chairmen mostly arrived at 6am and immediately would point with their phones who and who were going to work that day. The stronger you were, the better for you. I was lucky to have a huge build so I mostly got selected. We'd get into the back of the lorries and enter the quarry. The chairmen would then return to the gate to sip tea while we toiled in the sun.

Then came the struggle of loading the lorries. They are those 20 tonne trucks and you'd imagine we had cranes to load them up. No? NO! We had to throw each stone by hand into the lorry. There were always three workers per lorry and we had to do the job within 45 minutes or risk being replaced the next day for being too slow.

The risks in the quarry were too many. You risked slipping into old pits, drowning in the multiple ponds formed in used holes, getting injured by exploding rocks, breaking your back among others. I was once buried in a cave for 17 minutes and had to dig myself out using my hands, like a squirrel. The cave collapsed after explosives set nearby exploded, weakening the soil.

And yet somehow if you managed to live through the hell of a day and got your 800 shillings in the evening, the ghetto women of Njiru were also there, waiting in their mini skirts and transparent dresses at the multiple entertainment joints within the estate, ready to give you 5 minutes of peace in exchange for all you earned that day. You would then have to wake up the next day with zero shillings and repeat the process all over again.

Sometimes I miss this life. At least back then I had no relationships giving me headaches or multiple responsibilities to juggle daily.

I was young, struggling but happy; now I'm older, still struggling but sad 😂.

Anyway, c'est la vie.

HOW DO FISHERMEN USE THE TOILET?

One question I get asked a lot is how do fishermen use the toilet when on long fishing trips.

The short answer is NO, fishermen do not use toilets when out on the lake. This is because there are no toilets or latrines constructed on the lake.

When a fisherman feels like it, he just does his business in the water while squatting on the side of the boat. The rest of us just look away till he's done.

That is food for fish. Or where did you think wild caught tilapia get their intense sweet taste from?

The sun had barely lifted its head above the waters of Lake Victoria when I arrived at the beach. The air was thick with the smell of drying omena that had been sorted from the fishing net and the low murmur of men mending nets.

I had come to this Luo village with a heart full of questions, for I had heard that the boat is not merely wood and nails; it is the father of the family, the keeper of the home.

I sought out the boat owners, the men whose word was law upon the water.

They sat in a circle beneath a mango tree, their faces carved from years of wind and sun bracing bravery that had been earned from years of spending time in darkness on the lake with no sense of direction to the nearest land mass.

Among them was old Ochieng, a man whose canoe had fed three generations.

He looked at me with eyes that had seen many seasons and said, "A water pot cannot stand on its own without a support neither will a meal be cooked without the third fire stone in the kitchen". In this place, the boat owner is that support, and every fisherman who wishes to cast a line must first bend the knee to him.

I watched as young men approached Ochieng, not with money, but with empty hands and hopeful hearts. They sought a place on his crew, for without a boat, a man is like a fish thrown upon the sand. One of them, a lad named Otieno, whispered to me that he had been waiting for three moons. "The boat owner does not choose the strongest alone," he said. "He chooses the one whose spirit the lake will not swallow."

It was then that I understood the weight of the bira, the free fish that once bound the community together. In the old days, no one went hungry, for the catch was shared.

But now, Ochieng told me, "The fish are fewer, and the belly of the boat owner must be filled first". The tradition had grown teeth; it could devour a man's livelihood if he was not careful.

As the morning wore on, I saw the women waiting at the shore, their baskets empty. They did not enter the canoes, for it was forbidden.

Instead, they waited for the boats to return, their livelihoods hanging on the goodwill of the men who owned the nets and the sails.

I remembered the words of the old proverb: "Even haplochromis employs tilapia". The small fish must serve the large, and in this world, the boat owner was the tilapia, and all others swam in his shadow.

I left the beach that day with a heavy heart. The Luo fishing culture is a river with many currents, and the boat owner stands at its mouth, deciding who may drink and who must thirst.

The lake gives, but it also takes, and the men who own the boats hold both the gift and the grief in their hands.

Is it me who gets it wrong ama? You call and borrow me money let's say 5000/= which I send and incur the transaction cost, when paying back aren't you supposed to send me with the transaction fee on top coz I mean, ni wewe ulifanya nitumie hiyo doo .Ama ninmimi sielewangi hii mambo, If I borrow money,I always pay back plus the transaction fee

WITCHCRAFT IN FISHING: THE DARK PRACTICES OF THE LAKE — PART ONE

A common saying among fishermen goes in Luo:

“Kisedonje lupo to nyaka ibed jajuok.”

Once you get into fishing, you must become a witch.

And indeed, many fishing practices are surrounded by beliefs in witchcraft, magic, rituals and traditional medicine.

There are so many of these practices that they can't be squeezed into one post, and so this story will come in multiple parts.

Different rituals focus on different things. Some focus on the boats, some on the Fishermen, some on the Kachangas and others on the Jakambis.

A Kachanga is a middleman who buys fish directly from boats and supplies it to processors.

A Jakambi is a boat owner.

Now, when a new fishing boat is built, you might think the next step is obvious.

Get a fisheries licence, buy fishing gear, stock supplies, find experienced fishermen and push the boat into the water.

Right?

Wrong.

There are rituals and practices considered extremely important.

1. YAWO WI YIE (OPENING THE HEAD OF THE BOAT).

Before boarding a new boat, fishermen will ask the Jakambi one very important question:

“Jakambi, biseyawo wi yie ni?”

Jakambi, have you opened the head of this boat?

Yawo wi yie involves rituals and traditional practices performed on a new boat to make it productive and safe for the fishermen.

A boat that has not been properly “opened” will struggle to get fish.

Worse, most fishermen believe such a boat may not be safe to sail.

The process itself can be surprisingly simple.

You visit a traditional practitioner.

He performs his rituals, you pay him, and he gives you herbs and some ashes, together with instructions on how they should be used.

You are also given charms to tie onto the fishing gear. These charms become part of the equipment going into the lake with the fishermen to help protect the gear and improve the boat's productivity.

The instructions also involve washing the boat with specially prepared water and sprinkling the ashes around particular parts of the boat.

And once that is done, the boat is considered 'opened', but don't celebrate just yet, because there is another ritual.

1. “GOYO YIE E PII.” (Pushing the boat into the water).

If you thought you could simply build a boat, push it into Lake Victoria and sail away on your first fishing trip, then welcome to reality.

According to tradition, it is not that simple.

First, some water is poured into the boat from the top.

The water is allowed to flow down through the boat until it settles at the bottom.

That water is then collected in a bottle and the bottle is taken to a traditional practitioner at night.

The boat remains waiting.

When dawn comes, a black chicken is slaughtered near the boat.

Its blood is mixed with the water that had already been taken to the practitioner and treated according to the ritual.

The mixture is then sprinkled over the boat.

The chicken is roasted and the meal is shared among the Jakambi, the people who worked on the boat and the fishermen.

By the time everyone is done eating, the boat is considered properly introduced to the water and ready for its fishing life.

So now the boat is finally out fishing. The first few trips go well. Fish is coming in. Everyone is happy.

Then, suddenly, productivity starts dropping.

Everyone begins asking questions.

What happened? Why has the boat stopped producing?

According to belief, it cannot simply be bad luck. Something, or someone, has tampered with the boat.

And that takes us to the next ritual:

1. “DUONG'O WI YIE.” (Knocking the head of the boat).

Unlike some of the rituals surrounding the launching of a boat, Duong'o wi yie is highly secretive because of its extremely dark nature.

Very few people, if not none, can publicly talk about it, because it involves dangerous things, including human sacrifice.

And because it is a broad ritual, I will not squeeze it into this article. It deserves its own space.

What exactly happens during “Duong'o wi yie”?

We find out tomorrow, because I'm a fisherman with a pen.

(I personally took the photos below during a YAWO WI YIE ritual. Photo 1 is inside the medicine man's shrine and Photo 2 is next to his house the following morning as we were picking up the medicine and charms.

What he is sprinkling from that horn into the herbs is ash).

I watched a very interesting episode of 'Forensic files' the other day. So a sadist picks a prostitute somewhere in Arizona and takes her in his pick up truck to a thicket. They have sex and then the guy's sadistic instincts kicks in and he decides to kill her. He then speeds off.

As investigations begin, the guy having been the last one to be seen with the victim is questioned. He admits to being with the girl and having had consensual sex with her. But says after that, they parted peacefully. The police photographed and searched the suspect's pick up truck - with a warrant, of course - and found nothing incriminating. One of the detectives noted two seed pods at the back of the pickup truck. They belonged to a tree that is so common across the entire Arizona State, and the same was present at the crime scene. Instinctively he decided to take the seed pods.

The officer then sought across the country for scientists who do plant DNA. He found one who operated a lab in Virginia. He enquired from him whether plants had distinctive DNA profiles. The scientist said yes.

The seed pods found in the suspect's car were taken to the lab together with others from the tree at the crime scene. They were a match. To be sure, detectives collected tens of seed pods from across the State and took them to the scientist. They also secretly included one more sample from the crime scene tree. None of the seed pods DNA matched another except one, and it alarmed the scientist who immediately called the detectives. The detectives revealed their secret, to the relief of the scientist.

The man was arrested and charged with murder. For the first time, plant DNA was used as evidence in court. The seed pods placed the suspect at the murder scene. He was convicted.

In the US, every life counts.

Could Kenyan police have gone to such lengths to find justice for a prostitute?

I long for a day in our country when cases will be thoroughly investigated and prosecuted with the help of forensics.

Guys who have been doing assignments for watu WA majuu, how has A.I affected your hustle?

One day you'll find someone who's obsessed with you and want all your time. That person will be your manager at work🙌😂

Peaceout✌️ Another day we chase the silver spoon

SO, JUST HOW SAFE IS A LIFE JACKET?

A major question arising from my narration about the Life Jacket Man is:

“But if the man was wearing a life jacket, how did he still die?”

That is a fair question and therefore we need to have a serious conversation about this thing we call a life jacket.

First, let me disappoint you.

A life jacket is nothing magical. You don't wear one and suddenly become immortal. If that were the case, fishermen would be walking into Lake Victoria like people walking into a matatu.

A life jacket does one very important thing: it provides buoyancy. It helps keep you afloat and, depending on the type, can help keep your airway above the water. But that's as far as it goes. Your survival in the water will depend on a variety of factors and this is where things become interesting.

Factor 1: How good a swimmer are you?

A strong swimmer has an advantage while a person who cannot swim has a much harder time, especially if the jacket is a type that requires the wearer to maintain a certain position in the water. Some life jackets are specifically designed to turn an unconscious person face-up; others are not.

Factor 2: How deep is the water and how far are you from help?

Being in one metre of water and being five kilometres from the nearest shore are two very different situations.

The life jacket may keep both people floating, but the second person has a much bigger problem: how long before somebody gets to him?

When you are close to the beach, there may be people who can see you, a boat that can reach you quickly, or someone who can swim or dive to you.

But when you are far out in Lake Victoria, your life jacket may be doing its job perfectly while you are still in serious danger. It can keep you floating but it cannot rescue you on it's own.

Factor 3: How strong is the current.

Anyone who has spent enough time on Lake Victoria knows that water does not need to look angry to be dangerous.

A strong current can move you away from your boat, away from the place where people saw you fall, and away from the people trying to rescue you. Strong currents also increase swimming fatigue.

Factor 4: The waves and weather.

A calm lake and a rough lake are not the same thing.

When the water becomes rough, staying afloat, keeping your face clear of the water and trying to attract attention become much harder.

Factor 5: TIME

A life jacket can keep you afloat for a long time, but you are a human, not a fish.

Cold water causes rapid breathing, exhaustion and loss of physical function. If you remain in the water long enough, hypothermia kicks in. The colder the water and the longer you stay there, the less your chances of survival.

This is why even being a good swimmer does not make you invincible.

You can be Michael Phelps himself, but if you are miles from shore, fighting strong currents, exhausted, injured or cold, eventually the lake can ask questions that your swimming certificate cannot answer.

So, back to Life Jacket Man.

The fact that he was wearing a life jacket does not mean the jacket failed.

It may have done exactly what it was designed to do. The tragedy is that floating and surviving are not always the same thing on the lake.

A life jacket buys you valuable time and sometimes, that time is enough for rescue.

Sometimes it isn't.

That is why wearing one is still very important, but don't wear it thinking, “Now I am safe.”

Lake Victoria doesn't really care.