Whatever Happened To … The Women Who Boldly Declared: ‘No Sex For Fish’?

НОВОРОССИЯ.RU
19 Сен 2021, 15:00

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Rebbeccah Atieno stands with one of the boats owned by the No Sex for Fish women. Once a proud boat owner herself, she says she lost her home when Lake Victoria swept through the village; her boat no longer functions. She now earns a living working on rice farms and selling food at a kiosk. A widowed mother of six, she worries about how she’ll pay school fees without her fishing income.

Julia Gunther for NPR

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Julia Gunther for NPR

Goats and Soda
No Sex For Fish: How Women In A Fishing Village Are Fighting For Power

No Sex for Fish is facing a precarious future.

At its peak, the women in this collective, living in Nduru Beach and neighboring communities, had obtained some 30 boats with their initial grant from PEPFAR, the U.S. HIV program, and subsequent funding from the charity World Connect, which supports small-scale local programs.

But when we visited in 2019, a number of the wooden boats had been damaged by time and use. The women were preparing a new grant application. With a new boat costing $1,000 or more, they simply couldn’t afford replacements without help.

Then came two unforeseen blows that struck simultaneously in early 2020: catastrophic flooding and the global pandemic.

After heavy rainfall, rising waters swamped Nduru Beach, which sits on low-lying ground. Homes were submerged. The 1,000 or so residents had to be evacuated. Many of them had no choice but to live in a shelter set up in a local school. All of them, including the No Sex for Fish boat owners, lost their ability to earn a living in the midst of an economic downturn triggered by the pandemic.

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Rebbeccah Atieno, a proud boat owner, says she lost her home and all her property when waters from Lake Victoria swept through the village, including her boat and with it her ability to support her family of six children. The widowed 37-year-old moved to a home on higher ground where she paid about $30 a month in rent before finding a place to stay for free. A kindhearted acquaintance who’d left the area to live in Nairobi invited Atieno to stay in her house in Amboo, a village a few miles from Nduru Beach, for the time being.

At one point, Atieno contracted malaria. «There was a time I was sick and down,» she says. «I thought I would die. My worry was my children since there was no food for them to eat.»

Atieno has recovered and says she now makes a living by helping people cultivate their rice farms in the morning, then selling groceries at her kiosk in a local market later in the day.

She struggles to get by.

«I do not know where I will get money to pay for school fees next term since my business is not giving me much,» she says. Two of her children are in high school and four in elementary school.

Other members of the No Sex For Fish group face similar challenges.

Lorine Abuto, a mother of seven, is the only member whose boat survived the floods in good enough condition to take out into Lake Victoria. She hires men to fish for her but the aftermath of the floods, including tangles of weeds near the shore, has made it more difficult to reach schools of fish, and she sometimes has to buy fish from other sources. One morning in early September, she skillfully removed the scales of a Nile perch from a recent catch and sliced it in two, then put it on a mat to dry in the sun. She sells dried fish – and also fried fish – at a market near her new home a few miles from Nduru Beach.

Goats and Soda
Life Was Improving For ‘No Sex For Fish.’ Then Came The Flood

A young child squealed with delight as a Hamerkop bird danced next to the mat where some fish were drying. Abuto scared the bird away.

«Nature separated some of us but our goal is still intact,» says Abuto, referring to the women of No Sex for Fish. With Nduru Beach still uninhabitable, they have scattered to different parts of the region. The regular group meetings to discuss fishing issues and finances no longer take place.

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A scene from Nduru Beach in 2019, before rising waters flooded the village. When the fishing boats would come in with their morning catch, female fishmongers would negotiate fish they could sell. Sex was sometimes part of the transaction. But the women in the No Sex for Fish collective weren’t at the mercy of the fishermen. They owned their own boats and hired men to do the fishing for them.

Julia Gunther for NPR

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Julia Gunther for NPR

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In Nduru Beach, residents set up a «table banking» group. Members contribute at regular meetings held in one of their homes, tossing coins into a strongbox with three locks. When financial needs come up, a member can ask for a loan, to be repaid at the next meeting. After the village was flooded in early 2020, the table banking group handed out funds to help the evacuated residents survive.

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A meeting of the table banking group at the home of a member. The photo is from 2019, when No Sex for Fish (and the village) were thriving.

Julia Gunther for NPR

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A meeting of the table banking group at the home of a member. The photo is from 2019, when No Sex for Fish (and the village) were thriving.

Julia Gunther for NPR

Those in need could ask for a loan that they’d promise to repay at the next session. They might need cash to cover household expenses at a tough time — or pay for carfare to the clinic for a checkup. Several of the group members are HIV positive – one of the horrible legacies of the practice of trading sex for fish.

There was a tense moment when a man made a loan request and was told his wife had, unbeknownst to him, taken out a loan in his name and not yet paid it back.

But overall, there was a spirit of warm generosity. Some of the money contributed goes into a special goat fund. When there’s enough money in the pot, a lucky member would be gifted with a kid that can one day provide milk or be used for breeding.

But those goats – and indeed much of the livestock owned by villagers – perished in the floods. And the table banking fund has been dispersed to cover the expenses involved in evacuating residents in the wake of the flooding. It’s now down to about 10,000 Kenyan shillings — $90.

New grants, new dreams — from rice to tomatoes

In April and July of this year, World Connect disbursed two $3,000 replenishment grants to help the No Sex For Fish women in Nduru Beach start new businesses in the wake of the loss of their boats. Some are selling firewood and charcoal. Some are running food kiosks. At year’s end, women who got funding from the grant will report on their efforts.

Despite the gloom in the wake of the floods, Obura is optimistic that the group and its members will come up with new ways to generate income in this interim period: «We are of the opinion of doing fish cage and rice farming in the future.»

In Kusa Beach, another lakeside village with an affiliated chapter of No Sex For Fish, some of the members have already launched an ambitious new project.

That village is located on higher ground than Nduru Beach so the homes are intact. But their flood-damaged boats are out of commission.

So 15 women from Kusa Beach decided to put their hope in tomatoes — and received a grant of $3,700 from World Connect to get started.

This summer they planted five plots, hoping for a harvest to sell at market and also to process into tomato paste and powder. Four plots are doing well so far. The fifth has issues with salinity in the soil and water pumps.

«In two to three months the women will be able to evaluate their initial crop,» says Kibet, the World Connect field agent from Kenya, who himself does some farming. World Connect’s hope is that the tomato business will earn enough to pay for a second round.

They’re busy spraying and weeding, he reports: «They look so determined. We’ll see how it goes their first time.»

You may be wondering – why tomatoes? Kibet wondered, too.

The answer, he says, has to do with local lore. Hippos live in Lake Victoria and sometimes come ashore to graze. The rising waters have made it easier for them to do so. And they can be very aggressive, not only consuming crops but sometimes even killing people.

The women told him: «Hippos don’t like to eat tomatoes.»

Kibet, who himself does some farming, is not entirely convinced: «I’ve still yet to see that!» But the women told him they didn’t want anything to interfere with their agricultural project, and they were certain that tomatoes would not be enticing to any marauding hippos.

Viola Kosome is a freelance journalist in Kenya.