KENDU BAY 's local fame comes from the curiosity of
Simbi Lake , about 4km (45 minutes' walk) west of the village: head out of the village on the Homa Bay road and pass the left turn to Oyugis/Kisii. Just over 2km further on, over the river bridge, turn right down the path and walk for another fifteen minutes.
The lake, and the nearby Ondago Swamp, have been adopted as feeding grounds (in June and July) by a couple of thousand flamingos , refugees from Lake Nakuru. With a steady trickle of naturalists and tourists now coming to Kendu Bay to bird-watch, the villagers are, inevitably, keen for a slice of the action. Among the suggestions that have been made are that the Homa Bay County Council should fence off Simbi Lake, impose admission charges, and make provision for local traders to set up stalls, but as yet they have not done so, and the lake remains a tranquil beauty spot where the only commerce is the odd local resident selling sugar cane.
Even without the flamingos, the lake is unquestionably weird: several bright green but changeable acres of opaque water sunk 20-30m below the surrounding land and only a few kilometres from Lake Victoria itself. It has no apparent source and its origins are somewhat mysterious. It looks like a huge meteorite crater with a footpath around the rim.
The story goes that an old wandering woman was refused hospitality one rainy night at the village that once occupied the site of the lake. A big beer party was going on and she was ignored. Only one woman would allow her to warm herself and the old woman insisted she and her family leave the village with her. The young woman tried to persuade her husband to come with them, fearing the old lady's revenge for her ill-treatment, but in vain. So the two women left alone. And later that night there was a tremendous cloudburst and the rain came down so hard that the village was swamped to become Simbi Lake. Further variations on the story (there are many) improve on the theme of drunkenness and debauchery to give a Sodom and Gomorrah ring to the tale. Other lakes in Kenya have similar tales of origin.
The little lake's shores are almost devoid of vegetation. Nobody goes out on it in boats and it doesn't look as if they fish there either. It's usually described with the catch-all term "volcanic" and is apparently extraordinarily deep. According to one local belief, visitors should throw money in to avoid bad luck. Whatever the natural explanation, it seems plausible that the area was inhabited when the lake was formed, the disaster accounting for the legends. Similar, though smaller, lakes can be seen east of Kendu Bay along the road to Kisumu.
If you're heading on to Homa Bay, you might like to see the Oriang Pottery Centre in the village of the same name, 2km past the Simbi Lake turning. It's a UNDEP-funded programme, relying on clay from the local river bed.
