But when people refer to the Kenyan Luo community as ‘People of the Lake,’ my clan, JoKamreri, don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. We know the lake exists, and that most of our kinsmen live in its vicinity. We even enjoy fish delicacies just like any other Luo, but we want nothing to do with the lake, or any other large water body for that matter. We don’t fish, and certainly, we never swim. I’d forgotten about this when I jumped for a swim that fateful day and nearly died for it.  

Kamreri is a small clan, sequestered in the hilly southern parts of Luo Nyanza where rainbow colours the evening skies and singing birds with bright tails wake the villages every morning. In the evenings when the sun has retired to the realm beyond the hills and the villagers lie bedded soft, gliding in their dreams or dreaming wicked; the spirits of the ancestors ride the winds that bring rain to the clan and chase away evil spirits that bring strange illness to children and make young wives have stillbirths. On the nights when there’s no wind, and the horny dogs are too overfed to howl at the shadows, and the crickets scared of the thick folds of darkness lie quiet, and Jojuogi, the night-runners (practitioners of spiritism who run at night), have attended a night-running seminar at a faraway clan, you can hear the dew falling over the villages and the entire clan breathing.  

My placenta was buried in one of these villages, somewhere between the hills and the meandering rivers and the cul-de-sacs that run through sugarcane plantations. Kamreri is not as famous as the other Luo clans like Rachuonyo, Nyakach, Alego, Sakwa, or Ugenya. Occupying the hills of South Nyanza, bordering the Abagusii in the east and the Maasai to the south, we live farther from the lake than any other Luo clan. In fact, I know so many people from my village who have lived and died without ever seeing a lake with their eyes. Most people can’t even tell the difference between Ngege (Tilapia) and Mbuta (Nile perch). 

This aversion and mistrust of the lake has been so controversial over the years that some historians believe we are not Luo at all. According to some folklore, Mreri, our ancestor, was the brother of Girango, and the son of Mogusii, the begetter of the Abagusii—a Bantu tribe inhabiting the hills of Western Kenya. Some publications place our lineage among the Abasuba people of South Nyanza, originally Bantu-speaking tribes who emigrated from Uganda and got assimilated by their Luo neighbours. 

Now, of course, I’m no authority when it comes to history. I was born 25 years ago. My life is a culmination of the 300 followers I have on Instagram, 1,500 on Facebook, and a Computer Science degree I’m yet to use anywhere. I’m definitely no bastion of historical facts. I know only what I know, which is what has been passed down to me by my father from his father’s father. See? 

Of course, JoKamreri dismisses this alleged kinship with the Kisiis (no offense Abaminto) or the Subas. Nothing in our oral stories mentions anything about Girango or Mogusii or the Abasuba. But there’s a very simple explanation for the stale relationship we have with the lake.