The relationship to the past through communal recollection and the depth of this connection allows for the collective memory of a community to be restored. What a blessing it has been to commune with individuals who hold the intentionality of preserving their ancestral story, recognizing the importance for their community and future generations. The preservation of ancestral knowledge through oral history is one of the safest yet more fragile ways to safeguard our histories. The elders on Mfangano Island, Kenya remind us that we have a responsibility to sit, commune, and listen to their prayers and protect their wisdom, because we too, one day, will be the ones that hold our histories in the palm of our hands. ~ Triniti Goldsmith
Mfangano Island, and the surrounding areas are home to the highest concentration of the Abasuba people, one of Kenya’s smallest tribes. The Abasuba peoples speak the Suba language which is registered as an endangered language due to the assimilation by the Luo language. To speak the Suba language is very imperative for the Mfangano community due to the fact that it has become endangered by being assimilated by the Luo language. Many Suba men have married Luo women and their children adopt the Luo tongue. Fewer of the younger generation knows how to speak Suba, but nevertheless, there are individuals like the operators of Ekialo Kiona Youth Radio : Umoja Radio for Peace, a for youth by youth community radio station on Mfangano Island, Homa Bay County who produce programs in the Suba language targeting, “the health crisis and marginalization of the Abasuba people through expression, solidarity, and revitalization of heritage and culture” (Umoja Radio for Peace). These youth are examples of individuals that allow elders to find a sense of peace knowing that there will always be a will to preserve the Suba language.
The Suba clan originates from the Buganda kingdom in Uganda, who arrived after the early seventeenth century killing of the Kabaka Juju (king). The Suba community on Mfangano Island have a deep knowledge of their ancestral story. A reason for this is that their oral history is very strong and has been passed down through generations. Another profound reason is that the direct descendants of the individuals who were the first to ever migrate over from Uganda are alive today. The family that I have been working with for four years now are descendants of Witewe, the first ever man with his brother Kiboy to migrate over from the Buganda kingdom in Uganda.
Top of Mfangano Island walking to Witewe’s ancestral shrine
In May 2021, I graduated from university with my bachelor’s degree in Anthropology. In combination with my background knowledge, passion for cultural preservation and event production, community advocacy as well as my Caribbean descent and upbringing, I decided to lead a life of diasporic work. I have grown up witnessing the effects of globalization back home in Jamaica and since have been passionate about the relationship between cultural empowerment and heritage preservation in a world where culture is only protected when it is deemed exploitable, and in the end how this leads to the exploitation of natural environments within these communities.
I became involved with a community project called Overflow Spring of Hope on Mfangano Island, Kenya. We began by fundraising money to build boats allocating to women who were experiencing a dynamic which is very common in fisherman communities contributing to the spread of HIV/AIDS of vulnerable women needing to exchange sexual favors for access to fish to sell in the marketplace. As we continue to understand the phenomenon when addressing one community issue, many others can surface. Lake Victoria had become heavily overfished with an increase in unsustainable fishing practices. We raised money to send community members to Uganda to be trained in regenerative permaculture practices with the desire to create a community food forest, keyhole gardens, and eventually a sustainability school program to teach the youth ecological and cultural practices that can alleviate environmental degradation. With rainfall and funding fluctuations our progress has led us down a patient path. Throughout our journey we have had the privilege to collaborate with a community think tank called The Coalition of Global Health Innovation filled with community leaders in the health and cultural sector from all of the various continents. With the help from the coalition, we got invited to present at a conference to speak on decolonizing international development work. With a full heart and deep gratitude I returned back to Mfangano Island to begin collecting interviews from the community elders speaking on the migration story of the Abasuba community from Uganda to Kenya. After reaching out to African Digital Heritage, the Mfangano Island community and myself felt very grateful to now have an organization within the cultural heritage preservation field to work alongside with to have a platform to archive the communal histories. Currently, as we continue to build the archive and engage ways to secure funding, I am in the process of completing my masters degree in The Management of Art and Culture in Lisbon, Portugal with the intention of learning the most effective and grounded ways to secure funding for communal projects within a decolonial framework.
Gabriel Otieno, the man who I have been conducting community projects with for the past 4 years is a direct descendant of Witewe, a man who came over from Uganda with his brother Kiboy. The story begins when the current king of the Buganda Kingdom stole his brother’s wife to be his. After the king found out his new wife was pregnant with his brother’s child, he ordered her to be killed. When the king’s brother found out she had been killed, he went to the Queen demanding what should be done. The Queen ordered the brother not to kill the king, but he could disturb him for what he had done. The king’s brother hired a group of men to go and scare the king for what he had done. In this group of men was Witewe and his brother Kiboy. When the group set out to terrorize the king, the king ended up being killed.
Kiboy and Witewe went into hiding and were alerted by the kingdom’s drummer Mwembe who was in the council meeting that they were going to be killed. Kiboy and Witewe went into hiding at an old woman’s house called Kenge and she gave them a boat called Mbaregay and set out on Lake Victoria. Unfortunately, the drummer Mwembe made a mistake and left one of his sticks, so the Ugandans found out he was the one who alerted Kiboy and Witewe. By the time they reached Kenge’s house they figured out she was the one who gave Kiboy and Witewe the boat. The drummer Mwembe has to escape as well as Kenge. Witewe and Kiboy journeyed across the islands and finally decided to establish themselves on Mfangano Island, Kenya. Initially, the brothers stayed close to the shore of the lake, but after time realized it was dangerous due to slave traders and bandits. After a good amount of time, Witewe decided to head up the mountain while Kiboy went to the other side of the island. This is where the story begins of the Suba people emigrating from Uganda.
To this day, there is the ancestral forest shrine on Witewe at the top of Mfangano Island. There is also an ancestral shrine for Kiboy and Nyamba, Witewe’s first wife, but being that Gabriel is a direct descendant of Witiwe the relationship and protection of Witewe’s forest is Gabriel and his clan’s the Wetete peoples responsibility. The knowledge of their history runs very deep, with the community members having knowledge of the exact location that Witewe and Kiboy entered the island. On a very special day, I was accompanied by Gabriel to the ancestral forest of Witewe which I was only allowed access to because I was with a member of the Wetete clan, Gabriel, the direct descendant of Witewe. The Wetete clan are the only individuals allowed to conduct sacrifice in the shrine, they are the eldest clan closest to Witewe. When I went to the forest and witnessed the ancestral trees that I had been cut down, my feelings were so deeply impacted and I was filled with an intangible feeling of grief understanding how imperative it is for Witewe’s shrine to be fully protected by communal respect and understanding.
Digital Preservation
The importance of digitizing the Abasuba ancestral migration story and artefacts can be witnessed and felt strongly.. There is a small museum on the island which houses some artefacts, but the conditions of this museum are quickly deteriorating from the effects of the natural environment. The sun is directly hitting all of the pieces in the museum, the windows remain open, and there are faeces from animals over everything. It can become discouraging working within the cultural heritage field to witness the constant lack of funding towards cultural
preservation. We can begin to witness the change initiated from an internal understanding and desire to create innovative ways to harness protection and documentation of our collective cultural histories. The Mfangano Island community intends that by opening up this ancestral knowledge to the world, it will invoke future funding to assist financial growth within the community.
Artifacts at Mfangano Museum
A care project that grew into an initiative of freedom
I ended up working with the women in the community who were experiencing sexual exploitation from the prevailing fishing practices. In this abusive microeconomic environment, fishermen force women and girls to barter sex for the fish they sell in the markets. This pervasive and harmful practice has damaged numerous lives and caused HIV to spread rapidly within the community. Women, who have lost their husbands to this disease, are left to provide for their families. But the struggle becomes compounded because fishing is the main source of income, and the cultural norm is that men fish and women sell, leaving many women extremely vulnerable.
When I first arrived, Gabriel was building a boat for a widowed woman who was a victim of these practices. Although we raised money to help complete this boat, it became painfully apparent that we needed to build boats for as many vulnerable women as possible. To support this I created a gofundme fundraiser that facilitated the building of 3 more boats, the payment of labour costs, materials, and fishing gear. These boats are now shared among the widowed women of the community, who’ve chosen trusted men to fish for them- which is in turn changing the working relationships between women and fishermen.
Sustainable living and Regenerative practices
Waking up at sunrise to watch the fisherman scattered across the Lake, spreading their nets became one of my favourite pastimes. On some occasions, I would join Gabriel on the fishing boat to check the nets for our daily catch. Floating in the middle of the lake and witnessing Mfangano Island in all her beauty was a gift. For hours everyday, shore men and women cast then pulled in huge fish nets; a strenuous exercise that cannot be avoided because it is the community’s main source of income and daily sustenance. Just down the shoreline women wash clothes, pots and pans or use designated areas to bathe (separate from the men). In all, most of the day is spent on the Lake’s shore.
The parallels to my own upbringing were not lost on me. As a Caribbean woman, I find that vitality is always connected to the vicinity of a natural body of water. In Jamaica, specifically Ocho Rios where my family hails from, much of life revolves around the ocean. Fishermen take to the sea to catch lobster, tourists travel from afar to experience our beaches, and local families pack cars with fresh fruit and patties preparing for a day at the beach. For most of my childhood in Jamaica, I was covered in sand and water. If not the salt water of the ocean, then the natural water from the rivers and waterfalls. I always felt my most free in this state. I was at home surrounded by my family and connecting with nature. I remember how invincible I felt because everything we needed was all around us. Mfangano reminded me of home; the people know the land as much as the land knows the people, and this is something we must protect.
Despite this intrinsic link between indigenous people and their land, current economic factors are constant disruptors. Back home, I’ve witnessed hotel chains grab our beaches and public land. Not only is this an unsustainable practice, but it also robs the community of the benefits that these resources give. Instead of this, my desire would be for unoccupied land to be turned into an asset that feeds the needs of local communities- think of regenerative food forests, for example.
In comparison, a deep concern on Mfangano Island is overfishing caused by destructive and profit-oriented fishing techniques and the disruption of repopulation cycles because of the constant need for bait. With all these issues in mind, we decided to create a community food forest and help train community members in regenerative permaculture and hopefully at a later point Aquaponics.
‘Overflow Spring of Hope’, the organisation I work with on Mfangano, is striving to promote sustainable living and regenerative practices. Everything from the way we cultivate the land, to the way we interact with the lake and its inhabitants affects future generations.
With the money left over from the boat project, Florence, Gabriel, and Vero travelled to Uganda to receive regenerative permaculture training. Shortly after, we created another fundraiser to help train a further 7 women and 3 men, and now the community has a food forest and a growing number of keyhole gardens!
Ancestral Documentation 2023
After my first trip to Kenya, I immediately travelled to Egypt for a few months. During my time in Egypt, I met my friend Charlie from China, who started a community think tank called ‘The Coalition for Global Health Innovation’. It is a think tank of community leaders and project builders from countries in Africa and Europe. She had learned about our projects on Mfangano Island and decided to have the coalition mentor me to scale the projects on the island. Over the next year, I learned a lot and was connected to amazing opportunities. With help from the Coalition, Overflow Spring of Hope got invited to present online at a conference in Lisbon, Portugal on June 17th 2023, on decolonising international development work. For me, this and a deep spiritual pull signalled that it was time to return to my roots in a whole new way.
With the utmost gratitude, I returned to Mfangano Island this year (2023) to continue the work I had started but from an ancestral lens. Growing up in Jamaica and witnessing the slow Westernisation of my culture due to an influx in tourism was hard. Fast-forward 20 years, and the Jamaica I grew up in is very different from the one I experience today. This accounts for my commitment to collaborating with communities in protecting their ancestral lineage in sustainable and holistic ways.
I was first introduced to Gabriel’s familial connection to Witewe in 2021, but this time around there was an urgency and importance placed on speaking about him. The elders were ageing, and the youth seemed removed from their Suba heritage, but at the same time vigilant about protecting their ancestry. As I met more community members from Witewe’s clan, I felt I had returned to a more grounded place to understand what was needed.
I also felt I returned with a level of pain in my heart for aspects of the island I hadn’t experienced the first time I came. Not only had the world around us changed immensely but other things also, like feeling nostalgia that some of the trees were gone, that there was less unity in the community, and an increased struggle to put food on the table. I know the latter was because the Lake had a diminished supply of fish and the Island was still recovering from a terrible drought. It all reflected how differently I felt within myself compared to the last time I came to Mfangano. The community was as beautiful as I remember in 2021, but it mirrored the questioning and introspective space I was in.
Despite these internal and external changes, we collectively knew that time was of the essence. We had to begin the process of collecting and documenting oral stories from the elders of the community, who are quickly passing away. The history of the migration of Suba people from Uganda to Mfangano and other surrounding islands is a meaningful part of the tribe’s lore, and their ability to still speak in the Suba language.
I had the honour to travel up the mountain to visit the Ancestral forest (shrine) where Witewe once resided. The Wetete people are the only ones allowed to enter this forest to perform sacrifice. Gabriel, the co-founder of this documentation project, has the responsibility of protecting the forest as a direct relative of Witewe. Gabriel also has very close connections and is respected by many of the elders in the community. He began reaching out to them, and one by one sat down with these elders to listen to and voice record their knowledge of the Suba people.
What now…?
The Mfangano community cares deeply about how these stories will be shared and documented for future generations. That we preserve the integrity of the perspectives shared with us and appreciate speaking to elders whose narratives Gabriel continuously provides validation for. Ultimately, we hope to create an online archive of the voice recordings in Suba but translated into English, with pictures, and videos we collect along the way.
Soon, the world will be able to experience and learn about the strength of one of Kenya’s endangered tribes.
If you’d like to support any of the ongoing projects mentioned above, you can visit these Gofundme links:
Generational Healing and Empowerment in Kenya: https://gofund.me/6ed58051
Revolutionary Regenerative Permaculture in Kenya: https://gofund.me/fef098f1
You can also join in the celebration of the Abasuba people by attending the Rusinga Cultural Festival, an annual two-day event held on the last Thursday and Friday before Christmas. Over this period the mixed festival puts different facets of Abasuba culture on display including artefacts, traditional music by local troupes, Abasuba cuisine, sporting activities and so on.
Find out more about the upcoming 2023’s event here.
