Kisumu:

The second Sunday when the local workers took day off, many members went to different destinations. Nancy, Meg and a few more went to Kisumu for sightseeing. Kisumu, being lower in altitude than Kakamega and Hamisi and by the Lake Victoria it was very steamy hot.

We visited the Kisumu Museum. Their ethnographic exhibitions are interesting but lacked references of time. Exhibits of taxidermy were also very informative about different species around western Kenya. We were amused by the exhibitions of mambas in variable toxicities from mild to extreme. Here we learned that some of those venomous snakes were found in the Kakamega Forest where we had trekked onto side trails without any knowledge of them a few days earlier. The exhibition of Maasai huts showed the hierarchy in Maasai-style harem. The first wife had everything bigger than anybody including grain storage, so did her first son. The mud huts provided a cool oasis to visitors even including Kenyans.

Our driver Gichuki took us to Lake Victoria, so we thought, but we were just at the beach of the Winam Gulf which lies at the northeast end of the lake.

We missed the main Sunday outdoor market there but it seemed too hot to walk around and the market was huge. Instead we visited small indoor market and shopped at a store which promoted women’s coop products.

On the way back we experienced the biggest tropical shower yet, this time Gichuki didn’t choose back road short-cut where tarmac is sporadic.