Poverty, despair, death come to Maduwa

Jun 03, 2013

Today, we explore the walk through the dirty and shallow waters of Lake Victoria in Maduwa island, Busia district.

By Matthias Mugisha

 Untill June 5, in a campaign, Save Lake Victoria, Vision Group platforms is running  investigative articles and commentaries highlighting the irresponsible human activities threatening the world’s second largest fresh water lake. Today, we explores the walk through the dirty and shallow waters of Lake Victoria in Maduwa island, Busia district.

Maduwa is dead and so is the lake with fish long gone. On the shore is the abode of poverty, hunger and grumbling of broke fishermen. It is a story of over-fishing, silting of the lake, unemployment and anguish.

Maduwa is a ghost fish landing site on the shores of Lake Victoria in Busia district, eastern Uganda.

A once busy landing site is now a shadow of its former glory. The shores of Maduwa are inartistically dotted with unattended boats, underbellies exposed to the boiling sun. Some crack due to the heat.
 


Idle fishermen resorted to playing cards and talking about the good old days of fishing
 

The idle fishermen, some drunk by midday on cheap waragi curl under leaf shades and unfinished buildings playing cards and dreaming of the splendid past.

Those who venture into the once crystal clear blue lake, but now murky and shallow bring immature fish glittering in the sun like silver. They look so sweet, so innocent and so free to have died young. But that is the only best delicacy available in Maduwa- fingerlings.

“We used to bring tones of fish but now, its one kilogramme if you are lucky,’’ laments John Odhwoli, the secretary for Maduwa Beach Management Unit.

Until five years ago, the landing site used to be busy employing many people until the only fish processing company called Uganda Fish Packers closed shop. The company’s machinery is rusting and so are the fishing boats.

“Left with nothing to do, we now sell sand from the lake and transport passengers to Kenya across Lake Victoria,’’ Odhwoli says.

The fishermen are nursing self inflicted wounds. Sand mining, deforestation and cultivating up to the shoreline have conspired in silting the lake beyond description. The water is murky, brown and very shallow up to the Kenyan part of the lake. Waist high, the scummy vile-smelling liquid called the ‘lake’, up to Kenya, can now humbly allow one to wade through.

Because it is very shallow, boat men do not use oars, instead, they use poles to propel their small crude and artless boats. It takes one hour by boat to Kenya but might take longer to walk across the muddy water.


A resident shows the rusting fish preservation facility at Maduwa


It is through this coloured emulsion, not fit for drinking or cooking that the fishermen search for fingerlings to treat their poverty and hunger but all in vain.

“Not long ago, the water was clear and clean. A lot of fish used to swim around. I used to get tones of fish per day. Today, I only get one kilogramme. The only factory that employed us closed. There is a problem,’’ recalls Wabwire Mukabya, 28, an unemployed former fisherman. Mukabya has to share the one kilogramme of fish with the boat owner and his family.


The misery is compounded by lack of clean drinking water. The water in the lake is foul, decayed, polluted, contaminated and full of soil. A 20 litre jerrycan of clean water in Maduwa costs sh500. Dirty water is sometimes the cleanest thing one has. Sometimes women and children cannot afford to fetch the filthy brown water.

On the shore, misery censored the locals’ smiles long ago. Tonnes of country soil, rubbish, plastics, human excreta, flow into the lake with rain water to compound the already awful jumble in addition to the rubble brought in by the Sio River. The Sio originates from Mt. Elgon, flows along the Kenya-Uganda border and discharges into Lake Victoria.

With all these odds, the fish ran away long time ago to cleaner parts of the lake, the frogs that used to croak are silent. It is only the sound of grumbling fishermen dwarfed by waves slapping the bare shores that can be faintly heard.

“If I could turn back the time, I would be a happy man,’’ Mukabya’s wish is drowned by the furious waves.

IT’S YOUR TURN
How you can save the lake
 Did you know that by saving Lake Victoria we could create jobs for thousands that are now unemployed?

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