WAIRAKA, Uganda — As dark storm clouds roll over hills on the eastern side of Uganda’s Lake Victoria, Bumba Musasizi steers his fishing boat to the marshy shore of Africa’s largest inland body of water. Having set out before dawn to see what God has tangled in the nets he laid the previous afternoon, it is now nearly 10 a.m.
He cuts his engine and drifts into the landing site, approaching the community of Wairaka. The long wooden vessel, which requires constant bailing out due to a persistent crack, slows to a stop silently in the bright green weeds.
“Two fish,” he announces, a paltry showing for the 25 nets it took him and a fellow fisherman nearly an hour to lay the previous afternoon, and he and another companion more than three hours to haul out of the water this morning.