From an aerial view, one would think that they are over a vast water body. However, these are floods engulfing villages in Bunyala South, Central, and North Wards of Budalangi Constituency in Busia County.
Homes, Farms, schools, and infrastructure in these areas are submerged in water that is continuously flooding here daily. It is feared that about eight thousand acres of crops in Bunyala, a few weeks from harvesting are drowned.
Violet Anyango, a resident of Bubamba village in Bunyala Central, has had to remove her beans from the field for fear of being washed away by floods, though the beans are not ready for harvesting.
“At first when I heard that water was coming, I thought it wouldn’t get to us. But when I went to check my farm, I found crops already in the water. I have no choice but to remove these green beans,” Violet says.
Violet is one of the many residents in Bunyala who farm in the vast Yala Swamp. She says her crops were the last resort she had. School fees, food, other needs, and repaying her loan for farming all depended on farm yields. For now, getting the green crops out of the farm could at least solve the situation.
Residents here say the water caught them unaware at night and now the rate of the overflow is worrying them.
Not as in past years, this season’s long rains have not been as heavy as was expected. Although it has not been raining daily, the situation seems to be getting more volatile. This water is from Lake Kanyaboli, the second largest ox-bow lake in Africa, in the neighboring Siaya County that broke its retention dyke.
The lake has only one outlet that was blocked by residue from the lake thus there was no breather. Due to pressure exerted by water, the retention dyke became weak and broke forcing water to find its way out to the Yala Swamp.
“This water is finding its way down to Lake Victoria, and soon the lake will dry up if no immediate intervention is made,” one of the locals expressed his fears.
As the residents of Kadenge and other villages around this lake fear losing their source of livelihood, dry water taps in schools getting water from this lake, downstream in Bunyala, life is at risk.
The situation has had the attention of Busia County leaders who have made several visits to the lake. Irungu Macharia, the Western Regional Commissioner on his visit to the lake promised to dispatch a team of engineers from the national youth service to rehabilitate the dyke which would take at least a month.
More than a thousand families in Bunyala South and Central wards in Budalangi Constituency are living in camps after the water from Lake Kanyaboli overflowed and submerged their homes.
Lake Kanyaboli is home to some species of freshwater fish not found in Lake Victoria today thus environmentalists too fear losing so much of the aquatic life here if the lake dries up.
