El Molo Traditional Fishing Techniques Lake Turkana | Northern Kenya

In this participatory video, members from El Molo community in Kenya share their expertise about traditional fishing techniques in Lake Turkana, the most saline of Africa's large lake.

For El Molo community, fishing activities and the Lake Turkana itself sustain the local livelihoods. Fishing either during the day or at night comes up with challenges for the community. For locals, this lake provides an available and affordable source of animal protein, just as it happens in the coastal regions of developing countries.

In this film, El Molo elders, women and youth from Komote and Layeni villages not only share traditional fishing techniques but traditional knowledge and cultural practices they value and wish to pass on to future generations. Such practices include fishing techniques, fish preparation, the types of fish available in the Lake Turkana and some of the challenges they face while doing so.

This film is part of the “Northern Kenya Indigenous Video Collective: NENO, The Message” playlist. This playlist features 11 participatory videos produced between 2016 and 2019 in a joint project between InsightShare, The Christensen Fund, The Kivulini Trust and The Silicon Valley Community Foundation. The project aimed to connect indigenous communities across Northern Kenya and provide them with skills and resources to document their way of life through participatory video.

These participatory videos filmed by the trainees themselves show events and practices that are important for the community, like cultural festivals and endangered ceremonies. They also used participatory video to tackle pressing challenges and find collective solutions.

Northern Kenya has until recently remain isolated from the rest of the country, but now it is seeing development moving in at a rapid pace. This modernisation is a serious threat to the ancient ways of living and the traditional value systems that a living culture is rooted in. Most ethnic groups in Northern Kenya still have a traditional lifestyle, and oral tradition is the way of passing forward traditional knowledge.

InsightShare’s Living Cultures initiative supports Indigenous Peoples to protect their territories, languages and cultures using Participatory Video. Living Cultures is a growing movement across Asia, Africa and the Americas uniting indigenous communities across borders; to celebrate, foster and protect their cultures with the principle of self-determination at its very heart.

Find out more about InsightShare’s Living Cultures initiative here: https://insightshare.org/network/

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