Travels Across Lake Turkana

In late March, I traveled with Caterina Amicucci

Caterina (CRBM) and Joshua (FoLT) crossing Lake Turkana

(Campaign to Reform the World Bank) and Joshua Angelei (Friends of Lake Turkana) to meet those whose lives would be devastated by the impact of Gibe 3 Dam on Lake Turkana. As our plane descended into Lodwar, Lake Turkana’s biggest town, the landscape was irregularly green – rain had broken the area’s three year drought. But the rains which caused celebrations amongst the communities are increasingly an exception, no longer the historic, seasonal rule. We also found that the rain's respite had not calmed the people’s opposition to Gibe 3 Dam.

Kerio village, Lake Turkana, Kenya

From the Lodwar airstrip, we drove two hours to Kerio, a village once on the shore of Lake Turkana. We talked with villagers, mostly fishermen, about their lives and the lake. The lake has receded several kilometers from Kerio since a generation ago, the elders told us. We drove to the edge of the lake. After two years of working with local and international partners to protect Lake Turkana, I finally touched its waters and smelled the fishy, salt air.

 As we returned to Lodwar for the night, one of our two

Stuck vehicle, near Kerio, Kenya

vehicles got stuck in the mud. Five o’clock turned to six, then seven. The sun had set. We sat on the muddy desert. Eight, then nine o’clock. Ironically, we had spent 20 minutes earlier in the day stuck in dry sand. I can't recall a single field visit I've done to dam affected communities in Africa without the vehicle getting stuck or breaking down. These experiences have taught me patience and to accept what I cannot control.

The next day, we drove to Kalakol, a fishing town on the shore of Ferguson’s Gulf. It takes more than two hours to cross by motorboat to the lake's eastern shore. We stopped briefly at Sibiloi National Park, part of the Lake

Sibiloi National Park, Kenya

Turkana UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is remote and beautiful. After a short visit with the park authorities, we climbed back in the boat and headed toward Ileret. Ileret is Kenya’s last town before the Ethiopian border. The two men piloting our small motorboat spoke with quiet concern to Joshua. The men are Turkana. They are worried about staying overnight in Dassenech territory. Attacks between between the tribes’ fishermen are not uncommon. I am reminded of urban gang warfare, fueled by youth who are so powerful and powerless at the same time, a generation imprisoned by their situation and with too few opportunities to break out.

Once in Ileret, we were told that only two vehicles exist in the town, the other belonging to the church mission. Rains had soaked the dirt roads, and our vehicle could not make it to a village as planned. Luckily, we could go by boat instead. Reaching the edge of the lake near Selucho, we jumped out into the marshy water, pants rolled above the knee, sand and mud scrunching between our toes. I strained my eyes in a feeble attempt to check for crocodiles. I saw none.

Selucho, Lake Turkana, Kenya

Walking toward the village, a group of young girls ran to us, singing. We walked about a kilometer, the girls talking in Dassenech, laughing at us, touching our hair and our clothes. They are maybe 10 or 12 years old, like girls anywhere on the planet, I though to myself. We said our names over and over, and I laughed shyly, wishing I could exchange a whole conversation with them. But more than anything, we foreigners were unexpected comic relief to the girls’ daily routine.

After a late afternoon meeting with villagers in Selucho, we headed back to Ileret, where we camped for the night. “Watch out for carpet vipers,” we are warned. Venomous, sand-colored snakes. I tried to avoid any vipers by minimizing my time outside the tent. The next day, we headed back across the lake without any encounters, although I heard afterward that campers the next week were not so lucky.

We crossed back to the west side of Lake

Flash floods, Lodwar - Kalakol road, Kenya

Turkana, stopping at Kalakol, and the Kenyan Marine and Fisheries Research Institute which monitors Lake Turkana’s ecosystem. It was Monday morning and we spoke at length with a young researcher. He apologized repeatedly for not having his mobile phone to retrieve contacts for us. He lost his phone on Saturday, he told us, when the vehicle he was in overturned in a flash flood on the main road from Lodwar to Kalakol. He barely escaped the sinking car. The driver, a businessman, had drowned. It was the same road we had taken on Friday in swollen waters.

Our next to last day we drove north toward the Omo Delta, toward the Ilemi Triangle. But the morning’s rains had been heavy. We crossed two seasonal riverbeds, but the third was too much. So we stopped at a smaller village we had not planned to visit. They were angry about the dam and that no one ever stops at their village. The road and their church are the only ways they get news; there is no cell phone, no radio, no other communication. They told us that hunger is so bad, there is often nothing to eat but date palm nuts, which cause constipation. They break one open and tell us

Young boy at Lake Turkana, Kenya (Terri Hathaway)

to eat it, to taste the bitterness of their reality. “The people who want to build that dam should come here and eat these palm nuts!” one man shouts in disgust.

The day we arrived back in Lodwar to catch the plane to Nairobi, I reflected on what we saw. I had expected to see crocodiles, AK-47s, a lake full of fishing fleets and a parched desert wasting away. I saw none of those things, but I had absorbed the reality of the Lake Turkana region: the hunger, the disconnection from the rest of the world, the daily insecurity, and the compassion and sorrow of the people. Lake Turkana is the foundation of their survival. As the environment becomes harsher and without a government-driven safety net to help them through the worst droughts, Lake Turkana is their best defense against hunger and conflict.