A Little More on Kisumu

Photos of my travels to Kisumu

Photos of Kisumu and Manyatta

So I thought I would give a little more information about Kisumu, which is quite an interesting place. As I mentioned, it is the 3rd largest city in Kenya, but it feels much smaller. I have a slightly skewed perception of a city, living in NYC and all, but the pace here resembles a town. Many of the pictures you see of downtown I took from the roof of the guesthouse I am staying at. The pictures from the car come from my first trip into Manyatta slum. There will be more pictures of Manyatta as I spend more time there. These pictures were the ones I could get while riding in a car. Obviously the most beautiful part of Kisumu is the views of Lake Victoria. We actually sit in a small gulf off of the main lake, which makes for great sunsets.

Western Kenya has been slow to develop, especially after the collapse of the East African economic coalition about 20 years ago. Kisumu suffered a lot with that collapse, as its ferry system shut down and trains in and out of town became irregular at best. From what I can gather, Kisumu has seen better days, and there are a lot of efforts to bring back investment in the area and increase employment. One of the biggest challenges to attract investment is the ethnic conflicts. I’m sure most of you heard of the post election violence that took place in Kenya in early 2008. That violence was centered here in Kisumu. I see remnants of the violence all over town. Any building that looks burnt or destroyed was done so during the post election violence. There are huge potholes in the road to Manyatta where huge tires were set on fire (as roadblocks) to demand money from the wealthy citizens fleeing town, or coming back to town. Only the wealthy could do something like leave via car, so they were targeted on their way in and out. I won’t pretend to understand the ‘why’ to the violence, but on the most basic level, it comes down to tribal loyalty. The local Luo people tried to run out of town many non-Luo members of the community once elections results came in supporting a Kikuyu candidate. The main tension is between Luo and Kikuyu (who generally are from more central Kenya, like Nairobi), but there are definitely tension between the Luo and those of Indian descent, who own about 90% of business in Kisumu. After weeks of violence, a coalition government was formed, the president is Kikuyu while the prime minister is Luo. Kofi Annan is still mediating the coalition government, and many people are watching to see how it turns out. This stuff is really interesting, especially for people working in development, because there are a lot of questions raised about how western Kenya has been treated by the Nairobi based government. Many locals accuse the capital of not sending enough funds, people, and concern in their direction. Some blame this on Nairobi discriminating against the western Luo, some think it is due to general poor governance, and some don’t really buy it and see all of Kenya struggling. Working with the community here has taught me that you cannot come into town and try to help out without trying to understand these sorts of politics, despite them being very very very hard to comprehend. I am doing my best.

Sorry for the history lesson. Check out the pictures of Kisumu – it’s my home til August.