Kigoma, Tanzania – Just as dawn’s first rays start creeping over western Tanzania’s gentle hills, a constellation of scattered torchlights moving across the water signals the arrival of the fishermen returning to shore.
The early morning hours, when fishers ferry their bounty to the beach and women stake their spot in the market to sell the day’s catch, are when the clusters of towns and villages along Lake Tanganyika’s eastern shore come to life.
Shaped like a thin, outstretched finger tracing the borders of Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Burundi and Zambia, Lake Tanganyika is a place of superlatives: more than 400 miles (644km) in length, it’s the world’s longest freshwater lake, and with a low point nearly 5,000 feet (1,524 metres) below the surface, it’s one of the deepest.
One brisk morning in Kaseke, a fishing village in northwestern Tanzania, Dunia Omari Kiswabe, 54, hauls in his catch. Wearing an oversized football jersey and waterproof cargo pants, he splashes through the surf with bucketfuls of dagaa, a type of sardine fishers attract with torches during moonless nights.
On this day, Kiswabe, who has been fishing on the lake for at least two decades, unloads only 10 buckets of dagaa. It’s a disappointing amount and a haul size that is becoming all too common for Lake Tanganyika’s fishers.
“I used to get maybe 50 buckets a day,” he said. “Fishing has always been difficult for us, but it’s been getting harder.”
Teenage boys run by him carrying catches from other boats to the drying racks in the village, their work with Kiswabe already done.
“It must be God’s plan.”
Lake Tanganyika is Africa’s longest reservoir of fresh water and a lifeblood for the millions who live near it. But in recent years, fish catches have declined sharply.
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