Ssese Islands

The Ssese Islands were settled long before the Buganda kingdom reached the lake shore opposite. Their people, the Bassese, were known as canoe builders and sailors, and the islands supplied much of the fleet that made Buganda a power on Lake Victoria in the nineteenth century. They were also a religious centre: the islands are strongly associated with the balubaale spirits of Ganda tradition, above all Mukasa, the spirit of the lake, whose shrines drew petitioners from the mainland and whose mediums held real influence at court.

Buganda absorbed the archipelago and used its boats and its timber, and the islands lived on fishing, canoe building, bark cloth and crops grown in a fertile, well-watered soil. Disaster came in the first years of the twentieth century, when sleeping sickness spread through the lake shore communities; the epidemic that broke out in Uganda in 1901 killed more than 250,000 people, about two-thirds of the population in the affected lake shore areas, and the islands were left largely empty for years before resettlement began.

Through the later twentieth century the islands remained remote, living on fishing for tilapia and Nile perch, with slow boats to the mainland. Kalangala district, which is coterminous with the archipelago and holds no mainland territory, administers them from Kalangala town. A government-backed scheme planted oil palm across large areas of Bugala for Bidco, a processor based at Jinja on the mainland, clearing forest and smallholdings and changing the island's economy and appearance; the project brought roads, jobs and steadier incomes, and also disputes over land and the loss of forest that continue to be argued over. A vehicle ferry from Bukakata and a better passenger service from Entebbe made the islands reachable for weekend visitors, and lodges appeared along the beaches.

Island life is Ganda in language and manners — Luganda is spoken everywhere, greetings are long, and the clans and their totems matter — but the Bassese have their own reputation, built on boats, water and the old shrines. The lake spirit Mukasa is the best-known figure in that tradition, and the islands' place in Ganda religious life is still remembered even where churches and mosques have taken over daily worship. Christianity, Catholic and Anglican, is dominant, with Pentecostal congregations and a smaller Muslim community.

The other half of the islands' character comes from the fishery. Landing sites draw migrants from all over Uganda, from Kenya and Tanzania and further, and they have their own rhythm: boats out at night, the catch sold at dawn, money spent quickly, and a mobile population that moves as the fish move. This mixing makes the landings livelier and rougher than the villages behind them, and has brought serious public-health work on HIV to the islands.

Music and drink belong to the evening — bottled lager and waragi, radios and generators at the bars, and drumming at ceremonies. Visitors are a recent and accepted part of the scene, and the islands are used to weekend arrivals from Kampala. Manners are relaxed but dress in villages is modest, and time is treated loosely: boats and vehicles leave when they are ready.

Kalangala district, which covers the archipelago, had about 66,000 residents at a 2012 estimate, most of them on Bugala, and the population moves with the fishery. Kalangala town, above Lutoboka Bay, holds the district offices, a market, a health centre, schools and a handful of guesthouses; everywhere else is villages and landing sites.

Fishing is still the base of the economy, though catches have fallen and rules on net sizes and licences are enforced, sometimes harshly, by the authorities. Oil-palm growing is now the other pillar on Bugala, with plantations, smallholder blocks and a mill, and it has brought wage work, roads and a steadier cash income along with arguments about land and forest. Tourism supports lodges, boats and transport around Lutoboka, and smallholders grow matooke, cassava, sweet potato and pineapple.

The day begins before dawn with boats coming in and the fish trade, and slows in the heat of the afternoon; the ferry's arrival is the event that organises the middle of the day at Lutoboka. Electricity supply, water, transport costs, the state of the roads, falling fish stocks and the balance between palm and forest are the recurring local concerns, along with the cost of reaching a hospital on the mainland.

Fish is the everyday meal. Tilapia is fried whole until the skin crisps, or grilled over charcoal, or stewed with tomato and onion, and Nile perch is sold in thick steaks; both come with chips, cassava, posho or matooke and a tomato and onion kachumbari. Mukene, the small silver fish of the lake, is dried on racks in the sun and cooked with groundnut paste into a savoury sauce, and smoked fish keeps for the journey to the mainland market.

Beyond the fish the cooking is Ganda: matooke steamed in banana leaves and mashed, served with groundnut sauce, beans or meat stew; katogo for breakfast, matooke or cassava cooked together with beans or offal; and luwombo, steamed in a banana-leaf parcel, for celebrations. The islands grow their own pineapples, jackfruit, bananas and sweet potato, while rice, sugar, bread and most packaged goods arrive by boat.

Street eating is limited to what the landings support — chapati, the egg-filled rolex, muchomo skewers of goat or beef, roasted maize and gonja plantain. Nsenene grasshoppers appear with the rains. To drink there is milky tea with ginger, passion-fruit juice, bottled lager, waragi gin and, in the villages, home-brewed tonto made from bananas.