Sanitation nightmare in Migingo Island

By JOE OMBUOR

The famous rock known as Migingo in Lake Victoria has a day time population of over 2,000 people comprising fishermen, coxswains, touts, prostitutes, pimps, cooks, shopkeepers, fishmongers, Ugandan security forces, and others.

They all answer calls of nature where no real toilets or latrines exist save for shallow cavities mounted by corrugated iron structures.

These are the sham toilets brimming and flowing with filth where out of sheerer despair people go by day for the long calls. Note long calls because short ones, even for women, need no secrecy.

Shallow cavities mounted by corrugated iron structures on the edge of Migingo Island serve as toilets. [PHOTO: Joe Ombuor]

When night falls, one only needs a torch to dash to the watery ablution that is the lake all around the rock. It is no big deal. Water currents that are strong around the island wash the filth away.

Granted that the lake is the sole source of water for the island, sporadic outbreaks of water borne diseases, including cholera are common here, with disastrous consequences because health facilities are available only on the mainland 90 minutes away by boat on the Kenyan side and a whopping eight hours away by the same means on the Ugandan side.

Residents blame Ugandan authorities that lord it over on the island for the sanitary muddle. Says Mr Juma Ombori, the Migingo Island Beach Management Unit chairman representing Kenyans on the Island: "Ugandans extort money and collect taxes from us. It behoves them to provide sanitary facilities preferably in the form of portable toilets mounted on boats," he says.

Ombori describes as immoral, the collection of taxes up to Sh20, 000 per fishing boat every month without services as basic as toilets.

On the much larger Remba Island about three hours away by boat across the lake, the Kenyan authorities who run the show there have nothing much to show for sanitation either.

One toilet

The Beach Management Unit Chairman on the island of about 6,000 inhabitants Nicholas Odhiambo says the Suba County Council has built only one toilet block with seven doors, yet it collects large sums of money daily as taxes.

"Residents have no alternative but to go direct to the lake for calls of nature. The resultant pollution is a health nightmare," he laments.

The rocky shoreline along Remba Island resembles an open-air toilet with faeces in various stages of putrefaction. It is high time sanitary providers extended their services to the island.