Some moments in life help put everything in proportions.
Stepping outside the Kisumu Airport in Kenya and heading towards
Lake Victoria was one of those moments. Lake Victoria, or “Nam
Lolwe,” in Luo, is one of the African Great Lakes. Hanning
Speke, the first European to discover this lake in 1856, named
it after Queen Victoria. With a surface area of 68,800 square
kilometers, Lake Victoria is Africa’s largest lake by area, and
it is the largest tropical lake in the world. It is the world’s
second largest freshwater lake by surface area; and the world’s
ninth largest continental lake. It is also shared by three
nations – Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. For hundreds of years, the
area’s impoverished residents – who are devoid of any real
infrastructure, electricity and running water – have relied on
the lake for their food and livelihood. According to
assessments, some five million people are dependent on this
great source of life in Kenya alone, turning them,
unfortunately, into one of the world’s poorest and mo