Kome Island by Amisadai Monger

Dark green trees in the distance. Small wooden shacks on the shore. Crowding people peered through a large fence and stick gates. The late afternoon sun beat down on the island of Kome, the second largest island in Lake Victoria. Tin roofs glinted in the sunshine. The children stared as the ferry docked. Roosters crowed. The mill groaned as it worked. A narrow dusty dirt road ran down to the market.

 

Boats on the shore

The people of Kome are friendly but curious. They stared at my white skin and tugged my blond hair. Many of them are farmers or fisherman.  The farmers might have an acre or two to grow crops like cassava, potatoes, beans, and kunde. It is difficult to farm maize (corn) because of monkeys which come and eat it. The fisherman catch tilapia in the day and Nile perch at night. The fishermen’s small boats are made out of either wood or woven reeds. 

Fishing boats on the Lake

Close to the shores of the lake, there is an old guesthouse which has now been made into a little clinic. It has a small office, 4 beds in separate rooms, a room for giving birth, a lab, a medicine room, and an area for patients’ family to cook. In the lab, there are trays of glass slides, a shelf of medicine bottles, a counter for their microscope, samples of stools, urine and blood and a sink. Dr. Bernard Makori started the clinic and Dr. Isaac runs it.  The most common illnesses on the island are malaria, which is from mosquito bites, and parasites such as amoeba and worms resulting from dirty, bad water.



Kome Clinc

Down a small dusty path through small hair salons and shops selling flip flops, through wooden stalls of tomatoes and onions and tables of smelly fish, through puddles and fields and straw-roofed huts there is a group of people sat in the shade. The leader shouts “Wee!” and the group replies “Waa!” This group of men and women join together to save money which they can then borrow for their businesses.  It is called a Village Savings and Loans group. There are about forty men women in this group. They meet every Tuesday and all pay 500Tsh (40p) into the group money pot.

The Village Mamas Savings Group

 

The Group Mamas (with their children) with friend, Naha and us

Kome Island is just one of Lake Victoria’s many islands. I would like to visit some of the other smaller islands. I wonder how far away they all are and what work we might do there. We were only on Kome Island for a few days, but in that time I found out many new things.

See how life for kids on Kome Islands is compared to kids living in the UK!

	Name	Food	Language	For fun	Chores
Kids in the UK	Mia, William	Sausage, mash and peas	English	TV, reading	Tidying rooms
Kome Girls	Upendo, Jema	Rice, spinach and fish	Swahili, Kisukuma	Dancing, sit and talk	Cooking, sweeping, washing clothes and dishes
Kome boys	Amani, Saidi, Yusufu	Ugali, papai, Avacado	Swahili, Kisukuma	Play football,  running	Herding goats, fishing