J.D. Rush wrote the below in 2005, relatively soon after Kageno began our work. We're revisiting the phenomenon of Jaboya, or Sex for Fish, as our theme for this year's Harambee. Learn more about the event and join us if you can.
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Starting with a seemingly larger-than-life, African sky, the scenery on Kenya’s Rusinga Island is breathtaking. Cast your eyes downward slightly to nearby Kolunga Beach where the rolling hills meet Lake Victoria’s royal-blue water and it could be the setting for an exotic safari—until you take a deep breath.
The smell of dead fish burns your nose.
As your eyes fall further down, white gulls line tin roofs waiting for a chance to swoop—reminiscent of the ominous, final scene in Hitchcock’s The Birds. The only available walking paths are thin trails between fish drying in the sun—their bellies shining like aluminum.
There’s no electricity, running water, adequate housing, or even a nearby medical facility.
And, literally shoveled aside amidst the overwhelming poverty, people are dying in record numbers.
The beach town is one of many fishing villages within Kenya’s Nyanza Province visibly ravaged by poverty and the effects of HIV/AIDS.
The area, most noted for Louis and Mary Leakey’s 1949 discovery of the once believed “missing link,” Proconsul Africanus skull, is considered part of the dreaded Suba District—the district directly bordering Lake Victoria with a skyrocketing number of HIV/AIDS cases.
According to The National AIDS Control Council, the estimated prevalence rate of HIV in Suba District is Kenya’s highest at 34%-- compared to an overall 10.5% in the rest of the country. And considering virtually no one gets tested, the percentage could be significantly higher.
But why so high in the lake region?
“Most fisherman are young and single,” says Wycliff Okayo, Rusinga Island’s 20-year “head fisherman,” as he sits calmly untangling his net and rolling it on an empty bottle. “They move from village to village and have no responsibility besides looking for fish.”
He’s drunk—the alcoholic sort of drunk where one seems perfectly fine. According to his workers, he doesn’t talk unless he’s in this state.
“It’s everyman for himself—that’s what’s most economic,” he says. “That’s their lifestyle…always.”
Fishermen on Rusinga Island tend to bring in the most income yet often squander it on prostitution, marijuana and “chan'gaa”—a dangerous, home-brew gin.
The result: flocks of fisherman stumble towards the lake during sunset to board rickety boats with paraffin lanterns and old nets. On a clear night, the coasts are dark and the city seems to be on the lake. Lanterns float on the water attracting lake flies, which, in turn, bring “omena” (small herring) to the surface. Despite the imminent threat of hippos, storms, or theft and violence on the water, the quietest killer comes in the morning when the bartering begins.
Women, whose livelihoods depend on the sale of fish, line the shores for a small portion of the catch.
“There are plenty of young women whose husbands are not here,” says Okayo as he looks up briefly from the tangled mess.
“Many women hire ‘jaboyas’ to have sex with them because they can’t afford fish, that way they can get omena for free,” he says.
The word “jaboya” is an interesting development. Once meaning “the surrounding buoys on a fishing net,” it now describes someone who charges sex for fish.
“If you are a woman and you have a jaboya, you always have fish,” says local fisherman Ken Okongo. “If you don’t, it is not promising.”
“I’ve seen women form a team,” explains another local fisherman, Joseph Ouma-Osana. “For example, a boat pulls up full of fish—one woman agrees to have sex and she recruits another woman to have an affair with another man in the same boat. Then the women convince the two men to persuade the others in the boat to give them the whole catch.”
Dan Okombo, local youth leader for the Constituency Aids Control Council (CACC) in Kenya and resident of Rusinga Island, grows increasingly frustrated with the surrounding situation.
“These men are especially dangerous because they are coming from all different destinations,” says Okombo. “They are mainly outcasts in their own community that come to hide—they don’t care about HIV. They only toil to keep themselves upright.”
Unfortunately, other cultural factors like polygamy, infidelity, sex-cleansing rituals and wife inheritance (the forced passing of a woman to a deceased husband’s brother-in-law) further complicate the matter.
But every action has its consequence and Kolunga Beach is full of consequences. As these fishermen stumble to the lake, they stumble right past all the AIDS orphans left behind in their wake.
Kenya has the third highest number of AIDS orphans in the world, an estimated 890,000, says a report by the United Nations, leaving many children with either with a grandmother too old to be caregiver, in a stigmatized house where orphans carry the brunt of chores or, worse yet, on their own.
Mix in stifling, rural poverty and you have Kolunga Beach orphans with malnourished stomachs idling around the shore. It’s quite telling that, in an area brimming with fish, local orphans can’t even get enough meat.
Fortunately, there is some hope.
“Kageno,” meaning "A Place of Hope" in local Dholuo, addresses the dual malaise of impoverishment and HIV/AIDS by creating jobs, transferring skills, improving the environment and local sanitation, while, one day, hoping to provide local healthcare.
A recently finished community center will house a computer-training room, craft-making shop and a gift shop. And, from the cramped, dirt floor of an alley to a clean, concrete building, orphans reap all the benefits—profits from the program, an adequate place to learn and, most importantly, options.
The sad reality is, poverty and AIDS have formed a powerful symbiotic relationship that, until dealt with, will continue to plague Sub-Sahara Africa. There are many Kolunga Beaches dotting the shores of Lake Victoria. Go inland to local slums, and the same problems exist-- only with slight variations. Hopefully, with Kenya’s growing public awareness and more self-enduring programs like Kageno, the country can finally pinpoint some accountability and begin the long journey up.
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Join us this year at our Harambee for cocktails, dinner and a live auction to support Kageno's programs for women and children.
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