Kagwel, Kenya — Rhoda Ongoche Akech still remembers the whispers that followed her to the water’s edge in 2002. At 39 years old, the mother of seven was about to break one of Lake Victoria’s oldest taboos: a woman stepping into a fishing boat. But after they realised she was going there just to learn, and would not stop because of the stigma, “they kept quiet”.
Prior to that, things were very different in Akech’s community in Kagwel, a lakeside village in Kisumu County’s Seme subcounty. For decades, she had worked as a fishmonger in the village where fishing – only done by men – had sustained families for generations. But her income was dwindling.
The cost of buying fish from male fishermen, combined with expenses for firewood, frying oil, and bus fare to markets, was becoming unsustainable. Then in 2001, some women from neighbouring Homabay County arrived in Kagwel and did something unthinkable: they went fishing. Akech watched them and was inspired.
Despite warnings from community members who insisted women had no place on the water, she persisted. Her family depended on it. The cultural prohibition against women fishing in Lake Victoria communities stems from beliefs deeply woven into the social fabric of fishing villages.
According to William Okedo, a 57-year-old Kagwel village elder, the traditions were particularly strict regarding menstruation. The discrimination extended even to male fishermen, who were forbidden from engaging in sexual relations with their wives the night before fishing expeditions, lest it diminish their catch. Although Akech’s bold move in 2002 broke through the taboos, it was more than a decade before another woman joined her.
For 16 years, Akech fished alone, a solitary figure among several male fishermen. Then in 2018, Faith Awuor Ang’awo, a 37-year-old mother of four, went to the water herself. For years, Ang’awo had worked as a fishmonger at the nearby Luanda market, where the same economic pressures were mounting.
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