Kenya's lakeside city — tilapia from Lake Victoria, Luō culture, and the best fish market in East Africa
Kisumu is Kenya's third-largest city and the main port on Lake Victoria — the world's largest tropical lake and the source of the Nile. The city is the cultural capital of the Luō people, one of Kenya's largest ethnic groups, and the economy is built on the lake: tilapia and Nile perch are landed at the Dunga fishing beach every morning, sold at the fish market by 7am, and served grilled or fried with ugali and sukuma wiki (braised greens) at roadside restaurants for the rest of the day. The hippo population at Dunga Beach is genuine.
Kisumu was established as a British colonial administrative centre in 1901 as the terminus of the Uganda Railway — 'the Lunatic Express' that the British Parliament had debated for years. The city became a major port on Lake Victoria, handling trade between Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania. The Luō people (a Nilotic community originally from South Sudan) migrated south to the lake shores in the 15th-16th centuries; their culture, politics, and music have shaped eastern Africa profoundly — Barack Obama's paternal family is Luō from the Siaya area northwest of Kisumu.