How the heck did I get to know about Mageta Island? It was my uncle Mawere Nyambara who employed me after I came out of prison in 1983. I was the accountant at his business in sisal and cotton which we sold in Kisumu commercial markets.
With Mawere it was no jokes and we had to make profits in the business so he takes me to Mageta Islands where he buys land and I am thinking this is a crazy place. Even getting to Mageta Island is very tough.
Mageta is one of the complete islands in the world and for them they are surrounded with fresh water and fish everywhere and then the land.
Then my uncle asks me that I am from the university and should know how to do things. He asked me what to do with Mageta.
I told him Kung’u Karanja one of Kenya’s greatest liberation fighters was held at Mageta prison center by the British Colonial government and he was told he can escape by swimming out off Mageta except that to get out of that Island you have to go through hundreds of hungry crocodiles waiting for food. There is a reason the British Colonial government chose Mageta Island as one of their key detention centers.
Mageta Island is a very unique place. It has fresh water all around the land. Putting solar power there is a brilliant idea by the new government. That place can be the center of fish farming in Kenya. You do it in the lake and in the land. There is no shortage of anything for fish farming in Mageta Island if things are put in place for that.
The biggest issue for the new Ruto and Raila government is how they sort out the economy and the Financial Bill which they have to do in a month from now. If they get it right with no crazy expenses and taxes they are in and if they flop it is not just Gen Z coming back it is the whole country.
But I always like my uncle Mawere Nyambara who took me to Mageta and not only that he is the one who took me out of the country. I went home in 1987 and just run out of my mother’s home as she was cooking chicken for me and my friend Omondi Obanda just from Nairobi. We were facing arrest and on the run. We went to Mawere in Bondo town and he asked us where we wanted to go. We told him we wanted to go to Uganda. He told us no way. He told us we would be killed in Uganda.
Then he took us to one of his apartments in Bondo town and locked the door so we could not get out and he only delivered food to us and he figured we had no clue what we were doing. Then he sent us to Tanzania through Musoma and we had to walk across the border to meet his friend who took us to Mwanza and then to to Dar. That is why Mageta and Mawere mean a lot to me personally.
