Ordinary people's stories: Who are the Kenyan workers digging sand from Lake Victoria?
Kenyans in the village of Nyamware in Kisumu, Kenya, make a living by extracting sand from the bottom of Lake Victoria.
Village workers carry the sand they take from the bottom of the lake with their shovels to the shore with their boats.
Workers try to generate income by selling the sand they collect to contractors for use in construction.
Workers are exposed to various diseases due to long hours in dirty water.
Kenyan workers endure this hard struggle for a living wage.
Lake Victoria
British explorer John Hanning Speke, one of the Europeans searching for the source of the Nile, saw the lake in 1858 and named it Victoria, formerly known as Ukereve to the Arabs, in honor of the queen of England. Sir William Garstin carried out a detailed survey of the lake in 1901.
The lake forms the main water source of the Nile River. Most remain in Tanzania and Uganda; a small portion overflows into Kenya. It covers a total area of 68,422 km². It ranks second among the freshwater lakes in the world, after Lake Superior in North America.
* Photos Turkish public news agency: AA