Mwanza lies at the South shore of Lake Victoria at the mouth of the big Tanzanian River Magogo. It's last 50 km the river is 5 km wide.
 

The peninsula between North and South Bay is a 100 meter high rocky hill called "Capri point", possibly because the view from Capri, Italy is the only thing coming, if only remotely, close to the one here.
 

Picture 1: View from "Capri Point" Westward.

If you look like you do on Picture 1, the Yacht Club is down the hill right behind your back.. It proudly displays 19 small boats, 5 in the water, 14 pulled on land (See plan left).
 

On Picture 2 you see my truck not far from a jetty with two little boats. It is my office for meetings concerning the absence of wood for my dhow, my school class when my Kiswahili teacher comes, my study, my dining room for all meals except the evening dinner, coffee shop, and my bedroom when I am sleepy or have malaria. The little white building left behind my truck is a squash hall with a shower I can use.

When I want to swim or rinse washed clothes, it is my habit to descend right next to that jetty at "S&W" and go in the water. Left on this picture is the Yacht Club restaurant where you get fat fried fish fingers or ever the same chicken garlic or masala upwards of 2 euros. At the far end you see Hotel Tilapia, serving quite a good pizza for the same prize, followed by an impeccable espresso.
The yellow "JR" marks the Japanese Grill, where a cook serves guests, sitting around her, from a large gas heated metal plate a seven course Japanese meal upwards of 11 euros (the additional wine will cost you the same as in Europe).
Nevertheless, I insist on suffering the lousy food in the YC restaurant every now and then to feel being an important sailor with the other important sailors. This, for instance, because an announcement in big letters on the door of the lounge reads that Mrs. Mary so-and-so is from 6-5-2005 no longer a member of the club. This is, of course, a clear invitation to dive in gossip circles for details. It turned out that Mrs. so-and-so had engaged in gossip to much and with content that did not amuse the Board, most notably the present Commodore. Of course, I have tried to find out what exactly she said and about whom, but my different sources were widely inconsistent, so I decided to forge my own story version to propagate, taking the best of what I heard and adding some delicate details. What the heck, I am not even a member, I can say what I want!.

Picture 2. Yacht Cub (left) and Hotel Tilapia with Japanese Grill built in the water.

My habit to swim and wash at S&W was first frustrated by increasing signals of nervousness my friends here, that I would get bilharzia, and Jeremia claiming that the bay was seriously polluted. To an abrupt end however, it finally came, at this third visit since last year, after the watchman of the nearest boat on picture 3 (next below) told me the we had a 2 m crocodile living here, preying on fish, with centre of operation C on picture 2. He was quite serious. Also serious is that not only the little boat on picture 3 has a permanent watchman. The two little boats at S&W, picture 2, have a team of four, taking turns two by two, in serious uniforms. Then the YC itself has a watchman armed with arrows and bow. It is my ambition to to take a picture of the whole group, arranged in positions referring to Rembrandt's "Night Watch".

Picture 3. Club House and trailer ramp

Picture 4. Yacht Club view South West with its dry boats

Picture 5. Yacht Club view South to 5 km wide Magogo river estuary.

Picture 6. Hotels Tilapia, to the South, its Japanese grill built on the water

Picture 7. Hotel Tilapia

Hotel Tilapia has no match in Jinja, nor really in Kampala. It has a western and a Thai restaurant and a Japanese grill, a swimming pool and a bar where sports TV is projected on a large screen. Of course, as everywhere in East Africa it is run by an Indian. As far as westerners do anything here it is religious mission (Indians never do that), or the extraction of minerals.

Picture 8 Some Tilapia Swimming Pool Attendants

I found these lovely youngsters in the hotel's swimming pool. They were absolutely flawlessly speaking my own local language, Dutch. Patricia, Gaby and Irene moved from Mwanza with their parents at resp. 4, 3 and 5 years old to resp. Helmond, Eindhoven and Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Now at Dutch high schools, they were visiting Tanzania.
Other regular visitors of Hotel Tilapia are Russians flying away big Antonov transport planes filled with fish fillet. A few weeks ago one such Antonov crashed in the lake. The entire crew died but had been so drunk that the rescuers who found the bodies still smelled vodka. When an Antonov crashes it seems to eject a great number of tiny little white inflated rafts that just carry one person. They came on the market and now carry a host of fishers on the lake in the evening:

Pictures 9. Improvised and Professional fishery in front of the Yacht Club

But, polluted or not, there is still professional fishery in the bay, with dhows of the type I would now be building if I had wood (picture 9). The birds there are cormorants, who sometimes get company from a fish eagle (pungu the future name of my future dhow), belly-high with a span of 1.5 meter and more, from whom they take a respectful distance.  At the Yacht Club, one sees fish otters, monitor lizards (up to 1.5 m), kites, rats, pigeons with bright red rings around their eyes, and malaria mosquitoes. Except the croc, I 've seen them all. The most prolifically spread animal on the yard club compound is, however the common lizard. There is one sitting every other meter.

Picture 10. Most frequent animal, a lizard with a local name resembling "penis".

The latest story at the club is that since September last year there is a 5 meter croc, often resting at point c on the map on top of this page, that has already eaten two fishermen in our bay, and this croc is one of the reasons why the dinghies are not in use nowadays. Whatever may be true of this, I stopped swimming at "S&W" and I wash my clothes in the squash building's shower nowadays.