Sitting on the dock of the bay...

It’s another trip back in time, again back to Sunday at Kiboko Bay Resort. While I was there, I was mildly harassed by some local boatmen to allow them to take me on a tour of the lake looking for hippos. I resisted at first, their prices were too high. I had also been a bit wary of these boats, if you recall, I had been propositioned by similar men on one of my first days here, down by the “slum resort” and car wash.


As I lay there, reading and enjoying the sun, I watched several groups go out on the boats and return safely. Then, it became not so much a “I don’t want to fall into Lake Victoria and get some kind of weird parasite and/or be drowned by a hippo” as a “I don’t think I can afford this today” kind of refusal. When I got asked again, near the end of their business day, I said bluntly, “Love to, I don’t have 2500 shillings.” To which the response was, “How about 2000?”. “Nope.” “How about a 1000.” Quick math on my part 1000 shillings was about $12. I could afford $12 to ride around in a boat, and if we actually saw hippos, so much the better. Besides I wanted to get away from the cows…

We headed out on a little boat, just me, the driver and the guide. Interesting tidbits: Lake Victoria is only 6% Kenyan, the rest is 42/52 Ugandan and Tanzanian (though I can’t remember which has the majority). Most of the rivers that feed it are Kenyan, and it is the fresh water supply for the city of Kisumu.

We did see some beautiful birds, photos of which I’m going to post here, but unfortunately I didn’t write down the names of them all…

Funny story about the water hyacinth that in the “winter” months of December and January all but covers the coastal areas. It was not originally native to the lake and was dropped into a river many, many miles and countries upstream, but has taken root with a vengeance. Kind of the water cousin to the kudzu of the south ;-)

Waiting for the hippo was one of the oddest things. We kept circling around, and the guide kept making all these weird noises, as though the hippo could hear him underwater. What little I know of hippos includes the fact that they can stay underwater for extremely long periods of time. I remarked as such, and he agreed, but only in calm waters. In choppy waters such as that day, they had to surface more frequently. The hippo surfaced twice, and though I did see it, I missed the photo both times. The men were nice enough to wait again, and I decided to shoot a movie, thinking that I could extract a still frame later. Well, the hippo did surface, and I have not yet perfected the extraction method, but here is a low-res screenshot of the elusive hippo. For such a large animal, it’s rather anticlimactic to see ears and the top of a nose.

Throughout the trip, it was evident that there were many places that the local Kenyans liked to come and swim. We traveled past many of them. One, called Hippo Point, used to house a resort. And though the foundation and concrete columns are still partially in place, it was never rebuilt after a fire destroyed it decades ago. Further away from Kiboko Bay is the Kisumu Yacht Club, which conjures up all sorts of rich images, but it difficult to tell much from the water. There were two yachts in harbor there that must belong to rich foreigners or corrupt politicians… Even further down and close to the area I had done my little walkabout earlier in the trip was the Port of Kisumu, where there were people playing and diving into the water.

That was it for my little budget adventure along the Kisumu coast.

Today, I did a few more operations, including a solo exploratory laparotomy. Granted, the surgeon was just in the staff room sipping tea, if I were to get into trouble, but I didn’t. I did, however, witness the first instance of “bad medicine” here. An elderly woman had been treated incorrectly at a district health center and required an exploratory laparotomy by the time she arrived at NPGH. She was ill appearing, though not unstable, and the decision was made to give her IV fluids and antibiotics and operate on her first thing today. I showed up this morning, presuming that was my first case. She died sometime in the night. How much in error was her incorrect treatment? A overzealous (perhaps overworked) medical officer at the district center saw the lump in her groin and before assessing its identity (mass vs. lymph node vs. abscess vs. hernia), attempted an incision and drainage. It turned out to be a hernia, and he essentially cut a hole in her bowel. My only hope is that the interns and medical officers here learned from that mistake.

In order not to end on such a down note. I have yet another oddly named dish for today: kuku chapati, grilled chicken with a sort of tortilla. (Just for you, Kevin)

Tomorrow, more catching up from my weekend adventures.