The fishing Economy in Ggaba, Uganda
I’m currently traveling with Daniella Zalcman and Jon Alpeyrie, on our way to Sudan to document the independence of Southern Sudan. To get to Sudan we’ve had to spend a few days in Kampala, Uganda to apply for visas for Sudan. In the downtime, we spent the day (ok, really just the morning) in Ggaba, Uganda, a fishing village on the shores of Lake Victoria. We had all heard the stories of overfishing problems in Lake Victoria, so we thought we would head south and check it out. While this is in no way even close to a complete essay, it was a nice way to spend the morning, and an interesting place to explore and work in. What we found was a thriving village with a very active waterfront – fish, vegetables, meats, clothing, and goods – all for sale, people dodging bikes, cars and motorcycles while fishermen came and went in their boats.
The three of us all found our way out onto boats, where the men (I didn’t see any fisher-women) were casting lines and then dragging them in. By 10 AM they had collected their nets. All the fishermen admitted that in the past 10 years their catches have decreased dramatically. Moses, the fisherman I headed out with only caught one regulation size fish, though he seemed pleased – he said on some days he doesn’t catch anything – a massive change from when he first started fishing the lake.
We then headed back to shore, where the fish were auctioned off at market. Some purchasers immediately headed to a separate store where fish were gutted, scaled and fileted for a few schillings. The leftover scraps – skeleton, guts, skins, were then brought to the far end of the market, where they were fileted again, cooked, cleaned and packaged for various uses.
Had I been here 5 or 6 years ago, I would have lamented over the poverty throughout the market (I would venture to say this is a common assumption by most westerners). However, the truth of the matter is, Ggaba has a thriving (albeit low-income) economy with an active society. While hygiene could definitely be improved, we found most people happy, inviting and in good spirits – going about a normal Thursday morning (far from the how it might be perceived from an outsider’s perspective). I hope my photos show these people as happy, normal, hard working Ugandans. And I hope for their sake, the various governments that border Lake Victoria help bring back the fish populations – I have to speculate that these small, one-man fishing boats are not the reason for the overfishing - I assume there are massive, multimillion dollar fleets of boats that are decimating this natural resource farther out on the lake.
As for my choice to go black and white – I wasn’t feeling the color palate this morning – it wasn’t very consistent – too jumbled and distracting. As always, thanks for looking.
