Background
Kisumu developed during the colonial era into the principal port in the region. The railway line reached Lake Victoria in 1902, five years after plate laying began 1000 km away in Mombasa, opening up trade opportunities. It was briefly called Port Florence. By the 1930s it had become the hub of administrative and military activities on the lake. Kisumu was a difficult place at this time, bilharzia was endemic, malaria and sleeping sickness were common and the climate was sweltering. However, the area attracted investment from many different quarters, including Asians ending their contracts to work on the railway.
Kisumu and the region of Western Kenya near Lake Victoria are dominated by the Luo people, whose traditional livelihood is fishing. The Luo and the Kikuyu inherited the bulk of political power following Kenya’s Independence in 1963, and a prominent Luo Oginga Odinga became vice-President under Jomo Kenyatta (a Kikuyu). However a difference of opinion between them caused Odinga to resign, which resulted in the Luo becoming politically marginalized under the Kenyatta and then the Moi governments. The breakdown of trade between Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania and the collapse of the East African Community in 1977 badly affected Kisumu and there was no compensating expansion of manufacturing in the area. In addition to this, in recent years the water-hyacinth problem in Lake Victoria has proved to be an impediment to the local fishing industry and put a stop to ferry services on the lake. The choking prolific weed formed great mats, inhibiting even large boats from using the port and it got so bad around a decade ago, people could actually walk across it to reach their marooned boats. Today it is still a problem and the main bay in front of Kisumu’s port is still covered with it, but ‘swamp devils’, which regularly chop, shred and remove the weed, have contributed to reducing it. Nevertheless, while the fishing industry may have recovered a little, ferry services are still suspended because of falling water levels .
Overall, Kisumu is not in economic good health. It has one of the highest population densities in Kenya and with little formal employment the poverty rate here of 48% is much higher than the national average of under 30%. In turn this has caused the rapid expansion of informal settlements, informal trading and a marked increase of disease infection, especially HIV/Aids, associated to areas without enough healthcare facilities.
Over the years it has also unfortunately been a hotbed of ethnic violence, predominantly between the Luo and Kikuyu. The unexplained murder of Robert Ouko in 1990, a Luo politician who at one time served as Kenya’s Foreign Minister and administered a report on corruption of the Kenyan government, led to riots where many people died and much property was destroyed. Later, in the build-up to multi-party elections in Kenya in 2002, the nearby area was the scene of outbreaks of ethnic violence and thousands of people fled their shambas, coming into Kisumu or heading up to Eldoret. Then Kisumu and much of Western Kenya witnessed the worst of Kenya’s 2007 post-election violence, when hundreds of people were killed or injured and many Kikuyu people fled Western Kenya in fear of the lives. Although not Prime Minister Raila Odinga’s constituency, the province of Nyanza is where he was born and is a predominate stronghold of his support. Kisumu’s main street is named after his father, Oginga Odinga, who was a prominent figure during Kenya’s struggle for Independence. On the 30th December 2007, when the disputed election results turned to favour Mwai Kibaki (a Kikuyu) and not Odinga (a Luo), the town exploded and what followed was 10 days of rioting, looting and killing, and afterwards 120 bodies were counted in the city morgue. Most of the violence occurred in Kisumu’s slums, but furious mobs stormed Oginga Odinga Street, and looted or burnt out shops, supermarkets and even internet cafés. Many of these were Kikuyu owned and about 90% of the businesses in town were affected. Today, a large supermarket in the Alpha Centre near the main roundabout remains a burnt out shell, the Swan Centre further north on Oginga Odinga Street stands empty and shattered and many other buildings are boarded up or are in tatters. You can also see on the streets themselves, black spots on the tarmac caused by burning tyres. Physically it will take many years for Kisumu to recover, but nevertheless it’s more or less business as usual and it has now reverted to its former sleepy self. Again, women sit on the side of the road braiding each other’s hair while tempting shoppers with their beautifully arranged pyramids of tomatoes or split sun-dried tilapia fish, and boda boda drivers park their vehicles in the shade and somehow catnap straddled across them while batting away mosquitoes in their sleep.
