Thursday 7th July - Courageous peacebuilding work and potential for tourism

On Thursday I visited members of the Amwoth Women’s Group CBO at their office near the centre of the city. For the focus group they had kindly managed to assemble the leaders of their various sub-groups and their deputy leader. I later learnt that one of them had travelled from Western Province just to attend it!

Amwoth is effectively an umbrella organization comprising of a number of groups including women’s groups, youth groups and a group for assistance of people with hearing difficulties. It was inspirational to hear of the work that they have done and continue to do to help rebuild people’s lives and work towards a sustainable peace. Some of them told me how during the violence they hid fleeing Kikuyu’s in their homes until they could gain safe passage and how they headed to the stadium where IDPs had arrived from further West fleeing violence there to provide food and clothing to the people they met. They now have been holding regularly meetings with youth from different tribal/ethnic backgrounds and create opportunities for them to take part in sport and entrepreneurism together.

After this we headed to an area near the beach of Lake Victoria for lunch. This area has so much potential for tourism, you can take boat rides from here but the restaurants serving lunch are all unattractive temporary structures, hawkers continually try to sell you their goods and there is a lot of rubbish. We also encountered a lot of ‘street boys’ who were of various ages. I am told that they are often addicted to a kind of narcotic gum, and tend to use what money they can get to feed this addiction. It was sad to see how much potential one of the children had, who spoke English very well for primary school age, who is spending every day begging to restaurant customers to pay for drugs.

We also visited a conservation project in the afternoon which had reclaimed a section of former wasteland and was now growing a variety of plants a providing a suitable environment for different varieties of fish and other fauna. This project aims to create some lodges for tourists and develop a restaurant on the river. It seems to me that this has much potential and can link to other areas of untapped potential that Nyanza has for attracting tourists including Lake Victoria itself, Kit Mikaye rock, the Impala sanctuary and a national park. Margaret from Kosimbo is now involved in a government effort to realize this potential.