SIX FISHERMEN DIE IN LAKE VICTORIA FOLLOWING ATTACK BY A ROGUE BULL OF HIPPO AS THE BEAST OVERTURNED THEIR BOAT UPSIDE DOWN.
Writes Leo Odera Omolo In Kisumu city.
A small fishing Goye village in Yimbo Location,Usenge Division,in Bondo district was yesterday in mourning mood after six young fishermen from the village drowned and perished on Monday morning following an attack by a rogue bull of hippopotamus.
Four of the fishermen survived and were rescued. The incident occurred on Monday morning in their home-made canoe when they encountered the beast. It overturned the boat upside down spilling the ten men occupying into the deep water.
The four managed to swim and clung on the overturned boats for several hours. they were later rescued by the crew of another boat and taken ashore to Usenge Beach fishing landing site. Local rescuers had retrieved only one the body of the victims but by Tuesday after five bodies were still yet to be recovered and the search was continuing.
The incident came only hours after close to 100 fishermen who were marooned inside the lake for three days after their path to the shore was blocked by huge water hyacinth weeds for more than twenty four hours were rescued alive and taken to safety.
The incident took place in Rachuonyo North district where dozens of boats carrying close to 100 fishermen were marooned inside the deep water part of Lake Victoria. The rescue was successful following a joint combined effort Kenya Wildlife Service helicopter and the Provincial Administration in Nyanza Province.
Reports emerging from Bondo say the ten men were fishing in the morning when their boat encountered a huge of a rogue bull of hippo that attacked them and overturned their boat.
The area Chie Daniel Tiang’was quoted as saying that the four survivors had lung on to the overturned boat and signaled for help. By the time the help and assistance came, the six had already drowned.
By y the time of writing this report, Bondo police chief said he had yet to receive the report, but promised to dispatch a team of policemen to the scene of the incident t find pout what had gone wrong.
However, the area civic leader Councilor Agrey Dimo decried the increase incidents of hippos attacking and killing his people unabated.
He appealed to the official s of the Kenya Wildlife Service to control the population of hippos in the area to avoid more deaths.
He alleged that thirty people have been killed in hippo attack in a span of three months. The figure of the alleged victims of hippo attack could not be immediately confirmed with both the police and members of the Provincial Administration within Siaya County. However, observers were in total agreement with the civic leader that the number of incidents of attack and killing by hippos have increased I the recent past.
In the neighboring Mbita district in Homa-Bay County, the residents of Rusinga Island have lost five of their loved ones within last year and early this as the results of hippo attacks.
One knowledgeable and long time resident of Rusinga Island narrated t this writer that hippos had no history of harming people quite often. But he attributed the increases of hippo attacks on human being saying it could be attributed to the lost of green pasture and grass along he lake shorelines and weeds also the lake shore to which the hippos feeds too. They are hungry and liked the weeds and grass on which they feed on. One five ton hippo can feed on between one and two tons of grass per day in the normal circumstances. But due top over farming along the lake’s shorelines these docile and heavily built animals are no longer feeding well and hence sudden change of their temperament.
The only incident whereby the hippos can attack human being is when the female that is nursing a male calf which must be hidden to the dominant male father up t it obtain enough strength to fight the father o some time these animals are so destructive in destroying maize or sorghum millets farms that is next to the lake sore. in such a cases a dominant male hippo if provoked by a farmer guarding his farm can urn hostile an attack. But these are rare cases,” he, added.
The incident only came one day after close to 100 fishermen who were marooned inside Lake Vitoria without water and food for three days were rescued by the government using helicopters.
The fishermen had their path back to the fish landing beaches o the lake shorelines blocked by water hyacinth and weeds for three days without water and food were rescued.
The incident occurred in Karabondi Rambira location and Rakwaro Kamwala sub-location in Karachuonyo East location, in north Rachuonyo district within the County of Homa-Bay.
On of the fishermen who was among dozens of fishermen who rescued from the ordeal Joel Atieno Ogola narrated the three harrowing days which they were tapped for close to three days inside Lake Victoria.
He said most of the fishermen were from villages like Kotieno Gumba, Seka, Karabondi, Rakwaro Kamwla and Kogweno Kobala villages as well as around Kendu-Bay Pier. He said he and his team set for the lake on a fishing expedition last Thursday at about 4.30 P.M.
This was after the water hyacinth weed and cleared away from their beaches. Five hours into the lake waters, the previously calm weather was interrupted all of a sudden by a strong winds and storm that triggered panic among his boat’s crew.
Ogola explained that it was like the scenes and situation similar to those seen in the movies. Suddenly we could see from the dim moonlight that were being marooned by the weed that was being blown from both sides.
From that moment, everything turned dark because of the rains that rapidly increased every minute had also started drenching them.
‘All that they could to is to get anything that could protect them fro the rains,” said another fisherman Sam Okoth. When dawn on the next morning and there was enough light, they realized that they had been driven into the deep part and middle of the lake by the storm.
Okoth and his team were shocked to discover they wee not only in the deep part of the lake but they had also been encircled by the thick blanket of weeds,” he said.
They also discovered that they wee not alone in the lake after they counted about 30 boats and canoes which had between three and four fishermen aboard.
One of the fishermen in their boat had a mobile phone. They tried to use it in contacting the Beach Management Units, but the phone had run short of power and could not offer full conversation with the men on the beach. Crew of another boat had a working cellphone and managed to reach the men on the beach. In the middle of the same day, they D.C for Rachuonyo North and the Police chief arrive at camped at Rambira beach. But all of a sudden they saw a helicopter flying low over their heads. At an earlier attempt to raise the alarm for help they stood on the boat and used their jacket and shirts waving so that they cod catch the eyes o those n shoreline but I van.
The helicopter arrival was as the result of combined efforts by the Kenya Wild Life Services “{KWS}and the Provincial Administration. It was decided that energizing food and water be dropped to them as they were increasingly and rapidly become weaker and weaker.
After having been fed the helicopter dropped winch cable which pulled the boat up, but it got broken somewhere, and the gripped them.
It came when they were increasingly getting worried of the huge weeds, which moving also closing in because of the common stories that these weeds is the home habitat of big and dangerous snakes, and they fear had settled on their minds of possible attack, but noting e that happened.
Ogola denied the rumor that one fisherman man had died of exhaustion an hunger. He said they were only getting weaker, but thanks good all were rescued alive and heathy.
Ends