24h in The Most Densely Populated Island on Earth
There is an island in the middle of Lake Victoria that should not, by any reasonable measure, have 500 people living on it. It is roughly the size of half a football pitch. And yet: a brothel, a casino, multiple bars, a mosque, a pharmacy, 2 barbershops, and police from 2 different countries sharing a single rock in the middle of a lake. That is Migingo Island.
It sits in Kenyan territory after a disputed border claim between Kenya and Uganda was finally settled in 2009, and it is genuinely one of the most extraordinary places I have ever been to in my life. Getting there is not simple. It involves a long bus ride, a fisherman's boat, a bribe at a checkpoint, and approximately 4 hours of waiting around that nobody warns you about in advance. But we will get to all of that.
Joining me on this trip was my friend Kieran, who has been great company throughout this whole Africa trip and is probably one of the few people on earth who would agree to the specific type of nonsense I tend to get up to while travelling.
The CHAOTIC Bus Situation
We started in Kisumu, at the kind of bus station where the entire market comes to your window while you wait. Shirts, socks, nuts, chargers, anything. The matatus, for anyone who hasn't done this before, are small 14-seat minibuses that do not leave until every single seat is full. We had 6 people when we got on, so we sat there for a while.
I gave the driver a 100 shilling tip before we had even moved, on the logic that if anything goes sideways on a long bus ride, you want the driver on your side. As soon as the bus started, I realised he was not actually the driver. Still felt like the right move.
While waiting outside for the bus to fill, a stranger came over after seeing me talking to my camera. He wasn't aggressive or particularly threatening, just one of those unpredictable situations where you're not entirely sure where it's going. The guy I had tipped came over, sized up the situation immediately, and pushed the man away with the kind of decisiveness that made it very clear he had earned his tip after all. The man went down. A few others nearby joined in, telling him to leave, and eventually he did. It was more than the situation probably needed, but I was not about to complain.
About an hour later the bus was finally full and we were off. I took the back seat next to Kieran. The back seat is never the right choice. Every bump travels directly through your spine and into your skull via the roof of the vehicle. I hit my head on the overhead bar more times than I am willing to admit.
Somewhere along the way we stopped in a random town and I bought a chapati for 100 shillings ($0.78). That chapati was genuinely one of the highlights of the journey. I just love bread.
The bus also broke down. Of course it did. By the time we made it to Karungu it was later than we had wanted and Migingo had quietly become a tomorrow problem. Which, as it turned out, gave us time to figure out the logistics, find the dock, and make sure we had everything sorted for the morning.
Finding a Boat Ride to the Island
The dock at Karungu is where the fishermen bring everything in off the lake. It smells exactly as you would expect. Fish nets laid out across the ground, sardines drying in the sun, boats everywhere. I hate fish, so this was a full sensory assault from the moment we arrived.
The first guy we spoke to quoted 15,000 shillings ($116) to take us to Migingo. Then we met Sylvester.
Sylvester was at the dock, friendly, calm, and immediately more trustworthy-seeming than the first guy. He told us the trip takes 2 to 3 hours by boat, that the fishermen usually go at night, and that he could sort us out for 3,000 shillings ($23) for fuel. He gave us his WhatsApp. We told him we would see him in the morning.
That night we found the only hotel in Karungu that was open. We each got a room. One of the windows was broken. My shower did not work properly so I ended up sharing the one in Kieran's room. And there was no AC, no fan, nothing. The mosquito net had somehow become a suggestion rather than a barrier, because by the time I woke up the inside of it was packed with them and my mattress had blood on it from all the ones I had killed in the night.
A bat also flew into my room at 1am. Just to round things out.
The Long Morning of Permissions
We got back to the dock the next morning, met Sylvester, and immediately discovered that nothing happens quickly or simply when you are trying to get to a contested island in the middle of Lake Victoria. Before we could go anywhere we had to visit a government office to sort out some kind of permit, then negotiate the full cost of the trip, which involved Sylvester's colleague, a long conversation about who would pay for what once we were on the island, and a price that came down from 35,000 ($271) to 30,000 shillings ($233) after some very polite negotiating in the corner.
To sleep on a rock with no electricity and maximum mosquitoes $233 is objectively, a lot. We had a brief moment of "why are we doing this?" followed immediately by getting in the boat anyway.
We paid 5,000 shillings ($39) upfront, kept 2,000 ($15.50) back for the border bribe we had been told to expect, and pushed off.
Three Hours on Lake Victoria
It is genuinely far out there. At one point early in the trip I thought I could see Migingo on the horizon. Turned out that was a completely different island. Migingo is further. Much further.
The fishermen out here live on their boats for up to 2 weeks at a time. They cook out there. They sleep out there. They fish. That is their entire existence between trips back to land.
During the trip Sylvester showed me some photos of his sister on his phone. Her name was Josh, which I thought was suspicious 👀. The reason he was showing me was that he was trying to set me up with her. It happens fairly regularly in this part of Africa, a stranger you have known for a relatively short amount of time offering you their daughter or sister with complete sincerity. I was genuinely flattered.
Unfortunately my heart belongs to no one at this moment in time, so I had to let this one go.
About an hour in we hit the first checkpoint, a smaller island with a Kenyan coast guard post. They asked whether our boat driver had a licence to transport passengers. He did not, so there was a fee. We handed over the 2,000 shillings ($15.50) and they gave us a Coke and let us carry on. That is how things work out here and honestly I have no complaints.
Then, finally, you come around a corner and you see it.
Half a football pitch. Covered entirely in tin shacks. Five hundred people. It is genuinely unbelievable that you can fit that many lives onto something so small.
Actually Getting On the Island
I stepped off the boat directly into the lake. Ankle deep. My socks stayed wet for the rest of the trip. That is the kind of arrival Migingo gives you.
From the dock you are immediately inside the island. There is no arrival area. No path in. You step off the boat and you are in the middle of it, tin walls on all sides, narrow stone paths winding between structures, corner shops, fishermen everywhere, the smell of fish and fuel and people all compressed into a space not much bigger than a suburban backyard.
Before we could explore we had to go through one more checkpoint on the Ugandan side and hand over another 3,000 shillings ($23). Then we were free.
The guesthouse was called Mama Pier. Our room cost 200 shillings ($1.55) a night, and I want to be honest: standing in that room, I genuinely was not sure how I was going to get through the night.
Spoiler: I didn't.
The ceiling had flies on it. Thousands of them. There were condom wrappers behind the bed. The sheets had a history I did not want to think about too carefully. A Kenyan police officer slept in Kieran's room for security, which we were told was because there had been abductions on nearby islands recently. That detail did not particularly reassure us.
The view from the balcony, though, was legitimately beautiful. You are sitting on a rock in the middle of Lake Victoria with Uganda in one direction and Tanzania in the other. Somewhere else in the world you would pay $100 a night for that view. Here it cost 200 shillings and you shared it with several hundred mosquitoes.
Life on the Rock
Our guide for most of the day was a young guy named Livan, who had grown up on the island since he was about 3 years old, managed his father's fishing boats, and knew every single person there. He was excellent. The kind of person who makes a place make sense.
He explained the dual police situation: Kenyan citizens get handled by Kenyan police, Ugandan citizens by Ugandan police. When I asked what would happen if an Australian broke the law, he thought about it for a moment and said that since we had been processed through the Ugandan side first, it would probably be handled jointly. Good to know.
The island runs almost entirely on fish. When the fish are scarce, usually around May and December, life gets genuinely hard. The good months are July through September. Everyone knows the cycle because everything depends on it.
There are 2 barbers. A pharmacy run by a woman who has been the island's doctor for 10 years and who also made us lunch, just some fries. We were careful about what we ate, because dealing with food poisoning on an island with thousands of flies, no clean water, and a 3-hour boat ride from any kind of medical help was not something we were in the market for.
There is also a mosque that has been there since the island was established. A main shop that functions as the supermarket. And apparently a brothel where the going rate is 500 shillings ($3.88), which multiple people told us about completely unprompted.
During the 2008 conflict between Kenya and Uganda over ownership of the island, people died here. Livan was on the island when it happened. He described it plainly: there was shooting, Kenyans died, Ugandans died, and eventually both countries sat down and settled it. Now you have Ugandan police dating Kenyan women and Kenyan police with Ugandan girlfriends. People get on. That is what enough time and enough death tends to produce.
I got a haircut and a shave for 100 shillings ($0.78) from the best barber on Migingo Island. He was excellent. I looked genuinely good afterwards, which surprised me given the circumstances.
What Night Looks Like Out There
The sunset from the far side of the island is something else. Just open water in every direction, the light going down behind Uganda, fishing boats heading out for the night one by one. Livan told us the water drops from 2 to 3 metres deep near the edge and then just goes, and that nobody knows exactly how far down it goes. He also said that if someone drowns out here, they do not always come back up. We moved away from the edge after that.
We played pool at the bar, which, according to Livan, is a place where people come to conduct affairs under the cover of going on fishing trips. The bar caters to that demographic with some efficiency.
Then we went back to the room.
I genuinely do not know if I slept. The ceiling was moving. There were things in places things should not be: cockroaches, spiders, flies that locate your ear with a precision that should be scientifically impossible. I had my AirPods in, I was lying fully clothed on top of the sheets, and I was trying very hard not to think about what was underneath them.
And then, somehow, it was morning.
Leaving the Island
We were up before dawn. The guy who had been paid to guard our motor and life jackets was asleep, so we carried everything down to the boat ourselves in the dark.
We said goodbye to Livan, who had spent the better part of 24 hours showing us around, sorting out every situation that came up, and generally making the whole thing possible. Absolute legend, and I mean it.
The boat back was quieter. You sit there watching the island get smaller behind you and try to process what you just experienced. Five hundred people living on a piece of rock in the middle of a lake, fishing, running businesses, raising kids in some cases, navigating border politics between 2 countries, going to the mosque 5 times a day, getting haircuts, falling in love with police officers from the wrong side of the border. All of it happening on something the size of half a football pitch.
It is one of the most genuinely interesting places I have ever been. It is also not for everyone. But if you are the kind of person who read this and thought "yeah, I'd do that" then you probably would, and you probably should.
I left the video below in case you want a visual look at what the whole thing actually looks like.
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