Socialities of Practice

Abstract

Lake Baringo has for many decades been the destination for migrants from Western Kenya, who have left the shores of Lake Victoria in search for fish and related businesses. Some of the descendants of the first migrant fisherpeople continue to live at Lake Baringo, engaging in fishing, farming or other activities. Despite being born there, having built a house and raised a family there, they do not consider Baringo as their home; rather, they speak of it as a place of mobility, and their house a place for business, which they will leave behind as soon as the capital is raised to move “back”. Thus far, attempts at making it “back home” have proven to be difficult, as the social network is lacking to start a business - they feel stuck in their migratory position, where they engage in what I will call socialities of practice via work practices, economic and social bonds in situ and across localities. In this chapter, I aim to show how via media practices of accountability, both mobility and sociality are negotiated. Tensions between the narrative of belonging elsewhere and the stuckedness produce new socialities among migrant and local inhabitants at Lake Baringo, and urge us to reconsider understandings of im/mobility and sociality as mutual accomplishments.