Rusinga Island

Rusinga Island, with an elongated shape approximately 10 miles (16 km) from end to end and 3 miles (5 km) at its widest point, lies in the eastern part of Lake Victoria at the mouth of the Winam Gulf. Part of Kenya, it is linked to Mbita Point on the mainland by a causeway.

The local language is Luo, although the ancestors of the current inhabitants were Suba people who came in boats several hundred years ago from Uganda as refugees from a dynastic war. Many Rusinga place names betray Suba origins, including the island's name itself and its central peak, Lunene. There was an extinct language of Uganda called Singa, alternatives Lusinga and Lisinga, spoken only on Rusinga Island (which, of course is in Kenya). It belonged to the same group of Niger–Congo as Suba. As of 2006, estimates of Rusinga's population range between 20,000 and 30,000. The entire island is part of the Homa Bay County.

Most residents of Rusinga make their living from subsistence agriculture (maize and millet), as well as fishing. The native tilapia is still caught, though this species (like all others native to the lake) has been decimated by the voracious Nile perch that was introduced into the lake in 1954. Constant onshore winds cool the lakeward side of the island and provide clean beaches with ideal swimming and boating conditions, but poor roads between Rusinga and the nearest town, Homa Bay, inhibit trade and tourism. The brightly glittering black sands of the beaches are made of crystals of melanite garnet, barkevikite hornblende, and magnetite eroded from the uncompahgrite lava fragments in the agglomerates that overlie the fossil beds.

The island is also notable as the family home and burial site of Tom Mboya, who before his assassination in 1969 was widely pegged as Jomo Kenyatta's successor as President of the new nation of Kenya.

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