Like the speed of the wind

Kenya's Lake Baringo swelled to record highs this year, submerging villages, schools, health clinics and holiday resorts

Baringo: Peering into the lake, the village elder struggled to pinpoint where beneath the hyacinth and mesquite weeds lay the farm he lived in his entire life until the water rose like never before and swallowed everything.

A clump of sodden straw marked the spot: the tip of his thatch hut jutting from the murky depths, all that remained of his homestead after Kenya’s Lake Baringo swelled to record highs this year, submerging villages, schools, health clinics and holiday resorts.

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“In my 60 years, I have never seen or experienced anything like this,” said Richard Lichan Lekuterer, his gaze level with the tops of once-towering acacia trees poking above the water, the landscape altered beyond recognition.

Baringo and the other great lakes of Kenya’s Rift Valley have risen to levels not seen in at least half a century, some by several metres or more this year alone, following months of extreme rainfall scientists have linked to a changing climate.

“It was like the speed of the wind,” said Lekuterer, who relocated deep inland when the water shot up in March and is preparing to move again as the tide inches nearer. “It has never been this bad before,” said Murray Roberts, who has lived on Baringo nearly 70 years, where he restores degraded land with his partner Dr Elizabeth Meyerhoff through their Rehabilitation of Arid Environments Trust. Roberts’ childhood home, and a family holiday business, disappeared beneath the surface.

“It’s been phenomenal,” said Guy Erskine, as hippos wallowed in his submerged hotel at Sanctuary Farm, a conservancy on Lake Naivasha his family has owned since 1978. The massive inflow is also upsetting a delicate ecological balance in a biodiverse region famous for attracting masses of pink flamingos.

On an island in Baringo, a number of Rothschild’s giraffe await relocation to the mainland, their habitat having shrunk from about 100 acres to less than 10. The Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) and Northern Rangelands Trust have already rescued warthogs, impala and ostrich.

KWS Baringo warden, Jackson Komen, said conflict between humans and animals was rising, with hippos marching into vegetable patches and several ostriches turning up dead.”Our fear is, when there’s not enough food in the homestead, people might turn to the vulnerable animals,” Komen said.

In Naivasha, a tourist hotspot popular with weekenders from Nairobi, the timing is especially cruel. Staff at hotels and restaurants laid off during the coronavirus pandemic now find themselves without workplaces to return to as travel restrictions ease – and with their own homes knee-deep in water. “Naivasha residents have experienced two tragedies,” said Enock Kiminta from the Lake Naivasha Water Resources Users Association.