Lake Baringo : a look on an fish chain

For Easter I discovered lake Baringo and Bogoria, North of Nairobi and the one of the probably pretty underdeveloped fish chains of Kenya.



Lake Baringo is pretty touristic also thanks to its beautiful natural, however due to heavy rain the lake had more water and some of the nice logdes are now standing underwater.

When we stepped into the boat, there were plenty of fish fingerling, and fishermen brought in plenty of quite big mud and cat fish. It seems to be a very healthy lake, and overfishing does not seem a problem.

children fishing

Fisherman, fish on small boats made of very light wood, they look pretty like the ones you can see on Tana lake in Ethiopia.

Then when the fish is brought to land, if is first cut and sun dried for a bit, then it is fried and smoked.

the cut fish : sun drying

smoking the fish

The processing of the fish is mainly a women's work. Maybe that's also why this chain is pretty underdeveloped. Fish leaves the place dried or fried and reaches Nakuru the nearest town but not Nairobi. I am personally not fond of this smoked fried fish, but my Kenyan friends really love it. The processing allows to transport fish without a cold chain, and therefore the fish could reach Nairobi though, the place is 6 hours away. Clearly, campi ya samaki (fish camp) is a place, where if some thoughts are put in, markets could be unlocked to benefit women, who today don't make the money their high value product would be worth...