Where the tarmac ends in Budalang’i

By Ted Malanda

If you want the tastiest fried tilapia in this country, go to a place called Port Victoria. This small town is the headquarters of a constituency, actually a district, called Budalang’i — the place of lions.

The first time I went there I arrived late at night and got hopelessly lost. I was frightened of running into lions but all I saw were bare-chested men walking in the rain. I thought they were night runners but eventually realised that they were just young men fired up by delicious fish oils and the brazenness of youth.

no single bank

I feared bumping into the infamous Budalang’i floods but discovered that this time, the dykes are holding ground. In fact, the only large mass of water I encountered was in crater-sized potholes on the murram road where the tarmac ends.

I arrived in one piece though, after receiving directions at midnight from a man with a Kimeru accent. At the Lakeside Beach Resort, I met many junior elders, who regaled me with secrets of the clan as we sipped the things that men sip when they have nothing better to do and money to burn.

The people of Budalang’i, they told me, bailed out of Congo in the dark ages. This is a move for which elders of the time must be lauded considering the utter mess that their original motherland — DR Congo — has become.

They paddled across Lake Victoria, most likely in leaky, little boats not much larger than an average Nile Perch, and came face to face with lions, leopards and hyenas which they battled and subdued. These, after all, are the Abanyala — the able. They have in their ranks a clan called Abalwani — the wrestlers. Not that their wrestling skills have helped them much with mosquitoes, which are so daring that they practically eat you at daytime.

The next day, I wandered around the little town. If ever there was a place in urgent need of a planner, it’s this port with the name of a British monarch. The urban disorder doesn’t bother the local fishermen, though. What irks them is that while they toil, it’s middlemen in shiny suits who laugh all the way to the bank. By the way, there isn’t a single bank in the entire district.

Curiously, their fish is processed 1,000 km away in Thika and not on the beach where their ancestors battled lions. Well, coffee beans grown and harvested in Thika are processed in Europe, aren’t they?

Best quality

I laughed when a young woman said that their fish is eaten in Nairobi, leaving nothing but mgongo wazi — or bony fish backs — for their children. Well, we grow the best quality tea and coffee in the world but do we drink it? It’s like the visitor who is served the choicest parts of the chicken while the children of the house struggle with feathers, gnarled feet and intestines.

Anyway, if you are headed to Port Victoria, remember that the tarmac road ends suddenly, a whopping 30km before its intended destination — the beach where the fish harvest lies.

Local wags say that road is an abortion but that, really, is how development is brought to the people. They are only allowed a whiff of the aroma lest the real thing causes them indigestion.