Lake Turkana

I considered beginning this posting with “A Turkey Visits Turkana,” but thought that would lead to way too much eye-rolling…although that is exactly the way I felt my first few days on the trip to Lake Turkana, in remote northern Kenya. We left on Good Friday - me, my friends Sandra (from Peru) and Isis (from Germany). There were 13 of us in total and we piled into 2 large Land Cruisers, along with 2 driver-guides and a cook. As usual when traveling throughout Africa, I met such interesting people – joining us were a family from England, a woman taking time off from Credit Suisse in Zurich, a Kenyan couple working in wildlife preservation, a Swiss man teaching in Nairobi, a medical student, and a Canadian teaching in Uganda (Nicole, who became my tentmate on the trip).



It takes two long days to drive to the shores of Lake Turkana, near the village of Loiyangalani, on the southeastern shore of the Lake. That would be two days provided you have an army-tank-of-a-car, equipped with several spare tires, all the fuel you would need in case you were to get lost, and every drop of water you would need in case you ran out of fuel. I had been fascinated with Lake Turkana since reading and seeing The Constant Gardener, and hearing stories of its remoteness and the endurance it takes one to reach its shores. For once, it’s just like in the movies – as isolated, barren and majestic as it seemed when Ralph Fiennes visited there.

After leaving Nairobi, we headed north through the Rift Valley and stopped for a picnic lunch in a field of zebras. I could not help but notice all of our vegetables, bread, eggs, etc., for the 8 day trip, piled into dirty crates and placed underneath the Land Cruisers, exposed to all the dust that would be accumulated along the way. Well, this is certainly a different order of trip than the one I last took with my family, I thought, but an adventure! We then drove a few more hours, stopping briefly at touristy Thomson’s Falls, then to fill up some plastic jugs with more fuel (to be placed next to the vegetables, bread, eggs, etc.) in the small town of Rimuruti. Rimuruti is where the tarmac road ended – we did not see real road again for 7 days, until just before arriving back in Nairobi one week later.

After a few more, very bumpy, hours we arrrived at our first campsite, in the town of Maralal. I had been warned that this trip would involve true camping, but I still pictured tents with real furniture or, at the very least, a group of men who would actually pitch the tents. Not this time. Upon unloading, our driver tossed down to Nicole and me our tent. Puzzled, we looked at each other, dumped the contents onto the ground and wondered aloud what we should do with all of the metal spikes? Eventually, although last among the group, we erected our tent…however, upon observation by Peter and Regina (the Kenyan couple who, sorry for them, chose to set their tent up right next to ours), it was quickly taken down and put back up (by Peter and Regina), as they were afraid of being awoken in the middle of the night if our tent blew away.

Actually though, what kept us all awake that first night – until daybreak – was the singing and chanting we heard nearby from the Good Friday celebrations of the Samburu tribe. Like the Maasai, the Samburu wear brilliantly colored blankets and beads, although they seem to wear even brighter colors and more beads. Many of the Samburu have become Catholic, and throughout the night we heard the ecstatic conviction with which they practice their religion mixed with, what seemed to be, elements of their own tribal language and customs.

Maralal, the first of many frontier towns we would drive through, spreads out around a depression in the hills of the Mathews Range, with dusty streets crowded by Samburu people. After Maralal, we climbed into forest, dropped down across a plateau, through plains, then across a scorching valley on our way to Lake Turkana. We encountered constantly changing landscape and I could not stop repeating: we seemed to have reached the end of the earth! We passed through Death Valley – in an area of constant cattle rustling between Maasai, Samburu and Turkana tribes – where these tribes run with stolen cattle and often meet their demise because of the high temperature, lack of water and rough terrain encountered there.

Occasionally, we would pass a thatched hut or, out on the road behind a tree would appear, a herdsman, woman or child. But for hours we drove along without seeing another sign of life. We drove by a few missionary trucks, oddly packed with a priest, a nun and the Samburu. And we would be overtaken by a few lorries – the few that brought goods to northern Kenya each week –overflowing with men on a ride somewhere, probably just anywhere. We stopped to stretch our legs in one-street livestock towns such as Baragoi and South Horr, where everything in town seemed to stop as people stared at us. We continued this way all day long and stopped to have lunch near a dry sandy riverbed. It was so hot and dusty and, for some reason given my position in the open-sided Land Cruiser, I received more dust on my face and body than anyone else. I was filthy and it became quite the joke among everyone!

Eventually, coming over a rocky barren hill after miles of featureless plains of black lava, we saw the jade waters of Lake Turkana, stretching 250 km from Ethiopian border into Kenya – the biggest desert lake in the world. It is beautiful and expansive and empty. No boats. No lakeshore homes. Too many crocodiles so you cannot swim safely.

The loneliness expressed itself to me in the form of a single Turkana woman who, as we stood outside our Land Cruisers to take pictures, walked over the hill, out of nowhere, with her herd of goats. Where did you come from, I thought? And, how do you live here, in the middle of nowhere? Until very recently, the Turkana people had very little contact with the outside world. They are known as an extremely individualistic, bellicose group of people whose daily struggle for survival in the hot, dry area of northern Kenya is legendary. She stood back and just stared at us and I approached her and motioned with my camera, asking if I could take her picture. She nodded ok, and I gave her a bottle of water.

We drove down to the shore past small bunches of round, mushroom-top huts of the Turkana people. Then, we arrived at a grouping of 8 huts on the shore – these look nice I thought, and asked, what village is this? Its ours, the driver said, this is where we will stay for the next two nights! At least we did not have to pitch a tent, I thought, as I dropped my bag into the thatched hut and went to the shore with everyone else to watch the sunset, while a Turkana family brought in our fish for dinner that night…

And, what a night it was. I have never been to a hotter place – without air-conditioning or much water – or seen more crawling things, like scorpions and giant white spiders. Inside the hut was unbearable so in the middle of the night, Nicole and I awoke to move our wooden cots outside. The wind was so strong – and hot, as if someone had a hair dryer aimed at us – that I could not keep a sheet over me and every time I sat up my pillow blew away. Nicole slept with her baseball cap on to keep her hair out of her face. Then, in the middle of the night, we heard the pounding hooves and eeyoring of donkeys. Nicole and I both shot straight up – pillows and sheets flying away – as a herd of donkeys and a few Turkana men went stampeding by only a feet from us. I’m going to die by donkeys, I thought. We sat there in silent awe for a few minutes after they disappeared into the darkness, then looked over at each other and simply started laughing. It was a great feeling, to be there on the shores of Lake Turkana, in the middle of nowhere, laughing so hard we started to cry!

(Pictured: Turkana woman; Nicole and me in front of our hut on the shore of Lake Turkana (if you enlarge this picture, you will see how much dirt I have on my face and clothes); young Turkana boy with our fish for dinner)