I do not know if they are Ugandan or Kenyan.
They found me, I had not yet two months, the Tanzanian fishermen on a bagnarola off Kisumu.
He says that his mother was one that probably was shuttling between Kisumu, which is in Kenya and Jinja, Uganda's main port.
"Definitely not Tanzanian - they thought and said that I was the baby - because here the malaya are Ugandan or Kenyan".
After all the motherfuckers do not have citizenship, I imagine that I did not even have a mother.
Actually, the more I'm sorry for her, I might be the only boy to call her by her real name, and not to humiliate her in exchange for money.
So I grew up with them, the fishermen of Lake Victoria.
Poachers, because if it is true that the territorial waters of Kenya are little more than a tenth of the Ugandan and Tanzanian, it is equally certain that the best fish abounds just inside the Kenyan border.
To defend the fishermen we have to think about the fishermen themselves because the police of the navy who are sent to the boundary between the territorial waters, they just make good tips. Tanzanians are happy, because the Kisumu soldiers treat them better than the Ugandans, but the real battle is with the Ugandans themselves, to win the fishing spot. As a child, I dreamed of having a boat all to myself.
Like the one where I was born, a wooden shell to mind my own business. So I mica are Kenyan, Ugandan and Tanzanian. I am the son of a bitch, peach wherever I want. And the best peach perch and furu eatable, because furu there are at least four different species. I know these things, furu speak with us, because I was born in the middle of the lake, like them. And the lake, said the old fisherman Tanzanian Migingo that made me a father, is not like the sea, where everything is lost.
The stories of the bounce fish and come back, even more rich in detail and truth. The furu have told me they are among the oldest fish in the world, some species have 12,000 years; the Nile perch, however, was introduced fifty years ago strength in the lake, creating a revolution.
He adapts and reproduces easily, has no particular habits and has a history to be respected. Eat any type of plant but doing so steals some types of fish that do not find it and slowly die out, or change the area, going more and more towards the unfathomed center of the lake.
Working hard and ingraziandomi the chief salesman of Jinja perch, still young I did the little boat. Who wanted the best fish, he had to come looking for me.
One morning, as I followed the cold current favorite from the Persian rose, I ran into remote desert island, at a guess right on the border between the Ugandan and Kenyan waters.
If you could draw a triangle, tracing a route from Kisumu and making her encounter with another coming from Jinja, here is the island to which I wanted to give the name of one who saved my life. Are six good hours of boat off the coast of Kenya and at least twice those of Uganda. The policemen with their spears put us roughly half. But here they were never made it before then.
The island had a strange form of leavened bread, or back of those draft animals I saw in Kisumu. It must have been two hundred meters long and fifty wide.
A rock with a little 'grass above, nothing more. Comfortable enough to make us a tin shack and put my things.
Over time I had made two goats (no, not as you believe, for what I'm going to Kisumu trying not to think of the mother, and in any case with my peers, so as not to make mistakes ...) and a small vegetable garden, where, however, grew only spinach. Better than nothing.
The island of Migingo was a gold mine.
Every morning I loaded the fish boat, there were at least a hundred pounds. I also boosted the engine, so in four hours I was in Kisumu, resold, comperavo something to the island and I was going before calasse the sun.
Do not imagine that the show is the star lit sky in the middle of a lake of which you do not see the limits. And 'all blue, around and on top.
And you fall asleep happy to have come to your world there and in that manner.
However I was worried about the future, that sooner or later someone would discover my hiding place, my fish mine, my little private paradise. So I said that I lived in Kisumu in Jinja and vice versa, occasionally encountered a vessel which soured great directions on other current good for perch, so I held in high esteem and did a lot of questions, as well as the cops on their speedboats, which I was giving blow on the routes of Ugandans who extort a few pence more. The problems could come from the new lake adventurers, who were not fishermen and had their rules and their philosophy.
For me, however, that I was alone and peaceful, they were smart enough and bad. When they arrived, one night, to take away the goats, which at that time were seven, and the engine of the boat, even I realized. It took me five nights to meet with the strength of my arms and oars, my Tanzanian friends who took me to Bukoba to buy a second-hand engine to pay in installments. They guaranteed for me. At that point, however, they knew the island, because I had dragged us to let the boat and now brought me back. I recommended to keep the secret, otherwise the silence on the future of the current perch. A few days later came a fishing boat instead. They were people of Kisumu, I knew. They were kind, as it has always been anybody with me, but also said that it was not my Migingo certain and that I could not buy it, then it would be useful to share it with someone, the more you fish there was so much that he would give gain them without impoverishing me.
I told him of the dangers of Tanzanians pirates and said we'd arranged with guard duty. In fact things were going well, their two tin sheds were on the opposite side to that of mine, a gentle slope, to have a little 'shadow. My palms, meanwhile, were already grown. From them it was still all barren and there were more rocks. I was no longer the master of Migingo yet, but I always got there first. In a few months the barracks were five plus mine. The relatives of the fishermen had understood or someone was not able to keep the secret. I now went to sell only to Jinjia because of pink perch in Kisumu were full stalls. One afternoon I saw that a boat following me. I turned off the engine so that reached me, it is already too close to Migingo. But the boat headed back and disappeared on the horizon.
When I arrived on the island, I found quite a feat of sheet metal construction. The barracks in a few moons were already seventy, in that small space. Two boys in Homa Bay, two such high luo who had a hut made and looked like a small skyscraper, compared with the others, opened the first bar. Returning from the sale of fish with alcohol of all kinds, they had a small generator which worked the lights, the stereo and a tiny fridge, but most wore the Chang'a just made a deadly brandy tubers that stretched instantly, making it more bearable life in the world of spit that was for them the island.
Maybe I'm a sentimental, perhaps only a fish that, like his fellows, can go in packs, crushed into the vortex of a current along with thousands of others, or lonely to seek crevices and ravines on the stones and slush fund, but I was still well in my cabin, with two goats, my palms and my spinach. A few days later, they landed at Migingo two hookers. One was not clear if it was a boy run over by a truck and hung up with the first pieces found in the hospital, including a pair of boobs, or a lake monster of Ssese archipelago. The other looked like the oar of a large boat and was totally lacking in the brain, probably drowned long ago in Chang'a. Nonetheless paid their cabin five times more than normal to the two luo the Migingo Pub (the only consolation of this story and that the island has kept the name I gave her) and that was the only form of exploitation. To go to them, every night, there was a line. The two had taken a cripple, he said a cousin of one of them, who controlled the payments and above all stopped dancing when the girls fainted, although the lake monster, who was very attached to the money and did not want that life again long, he had given orders to find himself, at least a couple of times, with the salt on purpose. The oar rather not hold much, and also why it cost a bit 'more.
Ugandans arrived one morning that I was released. By now I had reduced my activities to only two routes, the other times I would just take the tips to report to my neighbors cabin the best spots where to fish, as they had always done the farmers. In return, finally, they are poking the first tomatoes.
There were a dozen and spoke with the Luo of the bar, which were now the boss of the island, even though they consulted with other ringleaders of the fish trade and with me just for the weather issues or current and routes. They demanded a small slice of Migingo in exchange for their silence with the authorities. There seemed to be a dispute, around that island and you do not know well if it was Kenyan and Ugandan. I knew not, and none of the two governments had never raised the issue.
Anyway one of Ugandan was a policeman. So the agreement was reached.
The island now overflowed with people, there was also room for another pub, which was not too much competition to the two luo boss, because it was for Muslims and did not sell alcohol, if not hidden. On the other hand cooked excellent croquettes furu and even some sweet weird to eat while drinking tea with cinnamon, according to me always based on fish.
When they returned Tanzanians pirates, this time they were armed. They began to shoot from wide and bouncing bullets or incastravano into sheet metal. They threatened to set fire to the island and began with two boats. At that point, to save what can be saved, the engine, and money was delivered. A disgrace to Migingo, but also an event that for the first time made her feel all the people of the island, including Ugandan, one. They all had the same problems and the same expectations. Then along they would come out of the crisis, working and taking the necessary precautions. The price of the most prized perch, the next day, had already increased and were purchased weapons from smugglers Rwandan Kisumu. The abundance of fish Migingo was that, although already diminished since I discovered that no one could have dreamed of abandoning it, and that anyone who would defend your boat and cabin at any cost.
But nothing can be done when the rules amounts to authorities. You can try to defend his case, we may rebel, but the fear of being taken to prison or even approached politely and then brutally murdered on the high seas, is too large to be daring.
When came the Ugandan police and planted a flag on the island, the two luo bar immediately come to terms with the devil, by fixing the fee and have done so then the fishermen. He says it was the same policeman who had been given a slice of island to call them, to defend their interests against pirates.
In short, it had become Migingo Ugandan but for those who come to check everything is fine.
"There's only a few refugee who gets by selling perch" is a report to the port authorities.
In the evening, the pub, but the Kenyans did not go down that Ugandans had planted their flag.
And by what right? They had perhaps shown a sheet, a map in which it confirmed that Migingo was Ugandan? So they decided that in any case, they would rather pay protection money to a Kenyan official, rather than a "black black" as they called the Ugandans, who are often the darkest of them. A few days later also came the Kenyan maritime police, with a spear less beautiful than that of Uganda, but the uniforms cleaner. In an official ceremony, they removed the flag of the neighboring state and planted that of Kenya. The appointment was set for the last day of the month, when the Ugandans would be passed to collect bribes.
And the blacks "arrived on time blacks" as only when there is to be collected. Their faces are one of the funniest memories that Serbia island. When they saw the Kenyan flag, they were about to load the machine gun, then when they saw also the officer of Kisumu, who already knew for some verbal confrontations on the high seas with respect to other disputes, they understood.
"We were here first"
"In fact they arrived before ours, intended as Kenyan citizens"
"The island is Ugandan"
"Show us an official map that shows"
"We're making do"
"Although we are making do, they will take care of our governments"
"Unless…"
"Unless?"
"We do not leave everything as it is and divide"
"We are in the right," Black Black ", so do not divide anything"
"Black Black will be your mother, after my brother if you brush up ..."
"Did you brush up your brother because you're a fag ..."
Follow shoves, punches and he almost comes to weapons. Are the two officers, still on the ground, screaming to stop.
Now the matter is in the hands of the two governments, and everyone knows Migingo.
They came to interview journalists, televisions recover. It 's almost a year that you do not know whether this world is spit Ugandan or Kenyan. The mountains is easier, the first to arrive we plant its flag and if there is another one, it means that no one has come up to there. I when I arrived in Migingo, first, I would not have known that the flag planting, because even today I do not know if they are Ugandan or Kenyan. Or even Rwanda, Zambia, Zaire, or a strange kind of Tanzanian. The curious thing is that, while humans stupid ones argue, pink perch decided to leave, and now there is only around Migingo furu and tasteless perch.
So I took my boat, I boosted my engine, I have gas reserves and two goats. I follow the current of perch good. He knows man and knows me. He always knows where to take me. But that's another story that I do not know if anyone ever tell you it's not a fish.

(KAMPALA) - Between Kenya and Uganda, the dispute over the tiny island of Migingo, in the middle of Lake Victoria continues.
For over a year the two states claiming the island's properties, a rock on which there are more than five hundred people, mostly Kenyans and all engaged in the fishery.
The turnover from fishing for perch, which abounds in that area, has prompted Kenya and Uganda to tap the clash between the police arrived on the spot. The island has always been held Kenyan and inhabited by its citizens, but lately the authorities in Kampala have claimed ownership, demanding taxes and entry permits to foreigners. In response, Kenya has sent the army, which has ousted the Ugandan flag. After this provocation, with the risk of an armed clash in the middle of the lake, has triggered political diplomacy. But the solution yet not seen. According to the stories of Migingo fishermen, until a few years ago the island was inhabited by a single fisherman, but for which you are untraceable. (ANSA AGENCY)