The slow boat ride to paradise

Takawiri Beach

The best day of the trip was the day I thought I had lost my eyesight. My eye doctor (and my mother) will be happy to know I've been reminded of the value of sunglasses. I was nearly blinded by the beauty of it all. (Or it was all that squinting through the glare off the water for eight hours at zero latitude, which my left eye eventually had enough of.)

Mfangano Island is west of Rusinga, and it's a larger and considerably more lush piece of land. As we approached in the small fishing boat we rode on for the day, Dan Nyangweso gave us a short geography lesson. The people of Mfangano, by ancestry the Suba tribe from Uganda who, over the years, has mixed with the Kenyan Luo tribe, have done a remarkable job at preservation. Subsistence farming and fishing were about it as far as industry, similar to Rusinga, but the number of trees covering the hillside set the island apart. That allows Mfangano to be a more attractive destination for tourists, though, outside of an airstrip and one small resort with float planes, as well as boat trips over from Rusinga, it seems like access is still limited.

The fishing villages suffer the same sketchy reputation as those on Rusinga (namely, fisherman are transient and tend to bring problems like alcoholism and prostitution, as well as living conditions of corrugated tin dwellings and environmental problems that result come from washing and bathing in the lake). However, slightly different weather patterns help prevent drought on the island, and sustainable farming practices have prevented erosion or clear-cutting. The hilly geography of the island may help as well, most hillsides are extremely steep and the best transportation is motoring around over the lake rather than walking or driving through. 

Fishing boats on a Mfangano beach.

An African named (really) John Kennedy, with the company of Dan and Ochieng, got us there. We met Kennedy at a beach on the west end of Rusinga, and as the real fishermen were coming in from the night's work the five of us were heading out. Since fishing occurs overnight in Lake Victoria, we had the waters nearly to ourselves.

John Kennedy and Timm. There's actually a good explanation for his name. Next post though.

Kennedy's boat had a little outboard motor, connected to the gas tank by a small hose that seemed to fail regularly at moving the gas to where it needed to be. After the engine stalled out for the third time in the first 20 minutes of the trip, Dan, absolutely deadpan with a little smile, says, "We may have a problem with transport." But Kennedy and Ochieng made sure we never had to paddle or swim, and after maybe an hour we were at the beach. The slow ride was fine, as Dan had time to give us a history lesson and point out the sights as we sailed along the island's shore.

Pretty smart muzungu, bringing his sunglasses and all.

We ended up in a small fishing village, where the women were drying the morning's omena catch. We walked through the row of tin shanties and, on the other end, hit a trailhead not that different from what you'd see at an American state park. The hike was advertised as a 90-minute loop to the summit, and looked like a signed and well-worn path to an ancient rock art site as well.

Looking back on the "trail."

The trail isn't worn from traffic of American hikers like us, however. It's much more likely the transportation network everyone is using. As such, the trail winds through people's yards, crosses the fences they've built to contain livestock, and crosses other trails pretty consistently. Even after stopping to ask several residents if we were headed the right way, we got sidetracked and found ourselves at the top of a long draw.

Luckily, Kennedy had fallen behind. The other four of us were pretty high up a face when we realized it was the wrong side of the little canyon we were trying to get up, so we yelled back down. Two women tending the steepest hillside garden plot you've ever seen, on the facing hillside, talked us down and to another trail. We took that route up a skinny dirt path through her nearly vertical maize farm (past a little dog who's job it was to scare monkeys away!) and met Kennedy. He had the sense to find the ranger who would let us into the rock art site, and who knew the way.

Dan looking at the signs at entrance to the Kwitone rock art site. Timm and I paid to go through the small fence and see it, but somehow Dan talked the ranger into letting the Africans ride for free that day.

Kennedy looks at the rock wall where the markings could be seen. This site was traditionally used by village elders for meetings and ceremonies that included animal sacrifice, we were told. Modern village leaders still use the site for meeting on occasion, and the ranger's full-time job seemed to be to protect the site.

The Kwitone rock art looks like graffiti, but it's actually extremely rare, thousands of years old, and culturally significant because so much African rock art has been defaced or lost. You can see the sun image in these examples, which obviously had significance to an agrarian society.

We scrambled up a rocky path just past the rock art site, found the summit of the mountain and could see in every direction. There were a few other historical sites, such as the clearing where women meet to grind grain, and then took a trail that was more meandering (and much easier to follow) back down to the beach.

We hopped back in the boat and motored for another 30 minutes to the eastern side of the island (as my head started to throb and I realized I didn't put my sunglasses in my pocket). We stopped at a dock and had our day's ugali at a small community museum that had more history of rock art and a small collection of ancient Suba tools and instruments. After lunch we set off again, beached quickly at Mfangano's main village for gas, then headed to Takawiri Beach.

The approach to Takawiri Beach.

There's two reactions I had to Takawiri Beach: First, you're flummoxed to have this pristine, clean, 100-yard stretch of the only white sand beach in the area all to yourself. It was the prettiest place we had landed on the lake, would have been flooded had it been Hawaii or another "destination," but the beach was completely empty on a perfect afternoon for a swim. The second reaction is to be confused (and maybe eventually, disappointed) to see a shuttered resort just back from the beach, still in working condition but unable to take advantage of the potential for tourism that would undoubtedly benefit the region. (And benefit tourists lucky enough to stay at a place so remote, peaceful and beautiful.)

The shuttered resort. See how nicely kept the grounds are. It was odd, almost like a ghost town.

We swam in the lake, sat on the beach, walked around the six empty (but surprisingly well-kept) cabins and pagodas, and then met the caretaker. He said we could have all the coconuts we wanted — as long as we picked them ourselves. After watching us (all of us, not just the clueless muzungus) struggle with a strategy to actually climb the trees, the caretaker brought a ladder and long stick to us. Wiseguy.

Somebody's been to Takawiri Beach...

The last stop on the boat tour cycle was Birds Island. This small island just south of Rusinga is a protected habitat, though Dan told us there's some need for better protection by government or wildlife groups — someone recently tried to squat on the island, and we could see a field of maize someone was obviously cultivating. The name of the island, of course, tells you what's being protected. Lake Victoria is one of the most diverse areas in the world for species of birds, and Birds Island seemed to have most of them. I'm not ornithologist, so I can't cite names for you. But there were trees and rocks turned white with bird poop, if that helps with the mental picture of how many birds are circling. I was squinting pretty heavily by this point and could really only open one eye. (And I was getting a little scared, actually. I'm not an opthamologist either, and I doubted anyone on Rusinga was.)

But what I could see was fairly stunning. Here's a few photos for you bird-watchers. Keep in mind I was shooting a little, well, blind at this point:

That day was our most "touristy," outside the safari excursion at the end of the trip. I've emailed with Dan Nyangweso since returning, and he told me he's now part of a small task force planning strategies to better take advantage of the region's attractions like Mfangano, Takawiri and Birds Island. To me this seems a bit like our interest in organic fruit, which I mentioned a few posts back. That is, as Americans we're often seeking the way things used to be, and in tourism that means finding preserved spaces or the rare place that isn't commercialized or full of other visitors. But Dan, like Vitalis and his comment about how GMO crops would be widely welcomed in Kenya, would love to grapple with the headaches of a tourism industry. I'd hate to see a McDonald's there, but I'd also hate to see such a special place stagnate without being shown to the outside world.

When you go to visit Rusinga, make sure this type of a trip is part of your itinerary. You'll see a variety of landscapes, meet people outside the villages, learn some history, feel the sun and wind over Lake Victoria, and be stunned by a postcard-perfect beach and pristine island wildlife. Just don't forget your sunglasses, or you'll be wearing them the next few days to readjust your vision.