#HistoryKeThread: Among The Kavirondo 
In 1904, a British parliamentarian, Cathcart Wason, made a trip to then East Africa Protectorate to, inter alia, inspect the progress of the Uganda Railway.
Wason and his retinue of a handful of British officials rode the Uganda Railway. Enroute, he described the land in and beyond Londiani as exceedingly beautiful.
“But of course as one descends rapidly the climate became less and less suited for Europeans”, he wrote.
“But of course as one descends rapidly the climate became less and less suited for Europeans”, he wrote.
He then described an unknown township in which Asians had settled.
“A foolish settlement of Indians was made in this district....and a very considerable sum of money wasted. There are plenty of natives in the country who are deserving of the first consideration at our hands, and there is marked hostility between the Indians and the natives...”
Wason captured the visit in his book, East Africa and Uganda, Or Our Last Land.
The Scot’s trip also took him to Kavirondo Nyanza, where he was shocked by the ravages of sleeping sickness - trypanosomiasis - on locals near Kisumu.
The Scot’s trip also took him to Kavirondo Nyanza, where he was shocked by the ravages of sleeping sickness - trypanosomiasis - on locals near Kisumu.
From his observations, residents of islands in Lake Victoria were most affected. Many received treatment at a makeshift hospital in Kisumu (pictured).
“No accurate statistics can be furnished of those who have succumbed to the disease”, he wrote. “But populous flourishing islands have practically lost the greater portion of the people”.
Still, Wason and missionaries at Maseno were hopeful.
Doctors, he noted, “shake their heads over the disease as their skill is powerless to cure or check it. On the other hand the Missionaries think that the worst is over. Science will no doubt discover some method of checking their ravages, and possibly even now deaths are....
....put down generally to sleeping sickness which may have arisen from other causes....”
He wrote on.
“As long as this hideous beast the Tryponosoma only preys on the blood, the system can hold out against it, but by-and-by (it) attacks the spinal fluid and then death is certain”.
Describing market scenes in Kisumu, Wason gives us a generous glimpse of life in Kisumu in those times.
He noted the town was “very populous”, and described scenes of “crowds of native ladies going to the bazaar or market place with their little articles of produce, firewood, sugar cane, millet, grain, and flour, native pipes and tobacco”.
Wason was also intrigued by the Kavirondo (Luo) traditional dress.
“Their costume is their own and peculiar, a slight belt round the waist with a bunch of fibre or leaves according to their time in the form of a tail hanging behind......the unmarried ladies wear nothing nor do the men....”
We also learn from the book that the Luo had innovative ways of trapping quails. Long poles, Wason observed, were set in the ground, on which small baskets were attached.
Each basket had a quail, which acted as a decoy, in them. When quails were attracted by the decoy, they were “caught like rabbits in the snares...”
Speaking of quails, it appears that the bird - if the visiting politician is to be believed - played a role in the naming of young ones among the Luo.
Wason noted that when a child was born, a medicineman was called in. After consultations with the parents, a name was provided. A quail was then taken and suspended by a string “through a flap of skin to the doorpost”.
If by daybreak the quail was dead, a fresh name was provided. However, if by daybreak the quail was alive, it was thrown alive on the homestead’s embers. It got roasted for a few minutes after which “it was devoured by the fond parents and a few favoured relations....”
A favored evening to y’all.
