In Kanyijowi sub-location, Kisumu County, Lillian Odhiambo forlonly sits in front of her mud house nursing her youngest child as she tells us when she last saw her husband alive.
She routinely woke up at 1am to prepare breakfast for her husband George Odhiambo, a fisherman, before helping him prepare for another day of fishing on Lake Victoria. The 24- year-old mother of three then bid her husband farewell. It was at 2 am.
Shortly after, Lillian was woken up by frantic villagers knocking on her door. Her husband’s fishing crew had been attacked by a crocodile and George was missing.
They said the crocodile was lurking in a patch of mangroves and attacked the fishermen as they were casting their net, seizing George who was at the front of the boat and dragging him away, she recalls.
George is one of the victims of a human-wildlife conflict on the shores of Lake Victoria as strategic fishing grounds diminish and residents turn to dangerous spots.
In the last three weeks alone, Kenya Wildlife Service rangers have been called in on two separate occasions after hippos wandered into the main land.
James Akumu is the secretary- general of Kaloka Beach Management Unit in Kaloka Beach, an area which is considered by KWS as one of the hot spots for hippo and crocodile attacks.
According to Mr Akumu, though attacks like the recent one are sporadic, fishermen live in constant fear of what lurks in the waters .
Every time we go out into the water there are always sightings of hippos or crocodiles but they do not always interfere with our fishing and we give them a wide berth, he says.
But when fish in the lake becomes scarce like it is currently, the animals come closer to our fishing grounds and that is when incidents like the recent one occur.
Mr Akumu says cases of conflict make it increasingly difficult for fishermen on the lake to earn their daily bread.
We depend entirely on the lake and fishing is what sustains the majority of homes in this area, he says.
Fishing is a relatively low entry profession and given the proximity to the lake resource, this is our most viable economic activity. With the current unemployment rate, abandoning the practice is out of the question .
The situation is made worse by the fact that the number of fishermen in the lake is increasing. More fishermen in the water means increased competition for strategic fishing grounds and in the process of getting ahead of their peers, some fishermen venture into the animals’ breeding grounds leading to further conflict.
The fishermen accuse the government of being complacent and even uncaring in the face of complaints arising from human-animal conflicts.