Homa Bay

The bay takes its name from Mount Homa, the carbonatite volcano whose broad peninsula defines it and whose summit stands about 20 km north of the town; the fossil beds on and around it, among them the Kanjera site first excavated by Louis Leakey in the 1930s, have drawn geologists and palaeontologists for a century, and the wider lakeshore has produced some of the region's most important prehistoric finds, including the Miocene ape fossils of Rusinga Island. Luo communities came to dominate this part of the gulf, while the Suba, who migrated from Buganda and Busoga in present-day Uganda between the mid-seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and settled the islands and the lakeshore, largely adopted Dholuo through intermarriage and assimilation.

The colonial administration made the natural harbour a lake landing and later a district station for South Nyanza, and steamers on the gulf tied it to Kisumu and to the ports of Uganda and Tanganyika. Missions established schools and clinics along this shore — the first Seventh-day Adventist station in Kenya opened at Gendia, inland from Kendu Bay, in 1906 — and education spread early through the lakeside communities, whose sons and daughters went on to work across Kenya.

For most of the twentieth century Homa Bay remained a small administrative and fishing town at the end of a long road from Kisumu. Fishing was transformed by the introduction of Nile perch to Lake Victoria in the 1950s and its spread through the lake, which brought filleting factories, export markets and, in time, falling stocks of native species. Devolution under the 2010 constitution made the town the headquarters of Homa Bay County in 2013, bringing county offices, new building and a larger population, and the shoreline and market have since been rebuilt more than once.

Homa Bay is a Luo town on a shore shared with the Suba, whose language survives on Mfangano and Rusinga and is the subject of a conscious revival through festivals, radio and school programmes. Dholuo is the language of daily business; Suba names, songs and canoe traditions belong to the islands.

Funerals are the largest events in the social calendar, drawing relatives home from across Kenya for days of vigil, speeches, music and food, and burial at the ancestral home remains an expectation. Weddings and homecomings work the same way, and December is the month when the lakeside villages are fullest. Benga, the guitar-driven dance music that grew from the nyatiti lyre, is the sound of the bars and the matatus, and the lyre and the orutu fiddle are still played at gatherings.

Church life is strong, with Catholic, Anglican, Adventist and independent congregations all long established along this shore, and church choirs are a serious pursuit. The lake shapes manners as much as anything: fishing crews and landing sites have their own rules and hierarchies, women dominate the fish trade and the drying of omena, and the day is organised around when the boats go out and when they come back.

About 45,000 people live in the town, the largest settlement in a county of more than a million. Fishing and the fish trade are the backbone: crews go out at night with lamps for omena or set nets for tilapia and Nile perch, the catch is landed and sold in the early morning, and traders move it to Kisumu, Nairobi and beyond. Cage farming of tilapia in the gulf has added a newer source of fish, and smallholder farming of maize, sorghum, cassava, groundnuts and sweet potatoes occupies most households outside the town.

County government, schools, the referral hospital and small trade employ much of the town itself, and the arrival of county offices after 2013 brought new buildings, hotels and residents. Boda-boda motorbikes are the main transport and a common first job for young men.

The lasting concerns are those of the lakeshore: declining fish stocks and competition for the catch, water hyacinth drifting into the bays, flooding when the lake rises, and high rates of HIV in lakeside communities, where treatment and research programmes have been based for years. Electricity, water and road improvements have reached the town unevenly, and many families depend on remittances from relatives working elsewhere.

Fish is the town's food. Tilapia, fried whole until the skin crisps or simmered in a tomato and onion stew, is eaten with ugali — kuon in Dholuo — and kachumbari, a salad of raw tomato and onion. Nile perch is filleted and fried, and its heads and frames are boiled into a strong soup. Omena, the small silver fish dried on racks and on the sand, are fried with onion and tomato and eaten with ugali; cheap and protein-rich, they are the everyday dish of the lakeshore.

The greens of Luo cooking come with the fish: osuga (African nightshade), apoth (jute leaves), mito and dek, boiled and often finished with milk or groundnut paste. Sweet potatoes, cassava, boiled maize and green grams fill out meals, and aliya, sun-dried meat, is a traditional preparation kept for the dry season. Chicken is the dish of honour for a guest.

Breakfast is chai with mandazi or chapati, and roasted maize, sugar cane and mangoes in season are sold at the roadside. Grilled meat and bottled lager fill the open-air bars in the evening, and traditional brews are still made in the villages inland.