This small port town of Homa Bay is the region's main centre and also a good base for visits to Ruma National Park, Rusinga Island and Simbi Lake, is in fact one of the friendliest towns in Kenya.

The town itself  has nothing much of interest, just a few dirty, pot-holed streets. Most of the town is strung out along the main street, which starts at the jetty and runs uphill towards Rongo. On its way, it passes a turn-off for Kendu Bay.

Homa Bay used to have a busy port, which provided the focus for most of the town's activities (fishing, trade and a little tourism), but in June 1997 this, and much of the shoreline around, became completely hemmed in by over a kilometre of thick, vibrantly green water hyacinth .Boats to Kisumu and Mbita were suspended, and most of the local boats sold. The government has since had the dreaded hyacinth mechanically cleared, and fishermen keep the remainder at bay by hand, but the port is a shadow of its former self now.

 Girls as young as 12 often work as barmaids in the nightclubs, hotels and bars of this town on the lake.Often they sell more than just alcohol to supplement their slim wages.

Homa Bay's status as a market town and transit point makes it a fertile breeding ground for the Aids virus.

Carpenters are never short of work in Homa Bay where coffins are in constant demand. Funeral and burial costs can cripple families whose main breadwinners have been claimed by the disease

Deprived of their parents, children are often looked after by their ageing grandparents.

They become the main breadwinners and often miss school to farm or go to work.

By missing out an education, the cycle of poverty continues and the impact of Aids spreads further.

The AIDS epidemic in Africa has taken the lives of so many parents that, now, more than 10 million children are orphans and these children are at higher risk of malnutrition, abuse and sexual exploitation. Kenya is one of the countries hard hit by the AIDS crisis. Across the country, the HIV-infection rate is about 12 percent. But in the small fishing town of Homa Bay, on Lake Victoria, the rate is much higher.  

 The AIDS epidemic which is sweeping across the African continent is leaving millions of desperately poor orphans in its deadly wake. In Homa Bay, a poor dusty town of 750,000 people in western Kenya, there are an estimated 35,000 orphans.