Lake Turkana, Kenya: postcard from the edge

As I write, a great gale is blowing in from Lake Turkana. The dry hills on the other side, always faint, have disappeared. Sheets of warm rain lash our tent, rollers crash on to the white sandy shore, huge pelicans struggle against the wind, the flamingos are gone, and fishermen like thin black sticks — Lowryesque — from the Turkana tribe can be seen streaking up the beach ferrying equipment from their now-beached wooden fishing canoe to a clump of doum palms where they’ll shelter.

But nobody is cold. The lake feels like a tepid bath when we swim (where humans fish, the Nile crocodiles stay away), while the air temperature has plummeted within hours from about 45˚C (113˚F) to more like a muggy English summer. These windstorms (though not the rain) are common on Lake Turkana. In this part of far-northern Kenya the average annual rainfall is 110mm (less than five inches), but the region’s oven-like heat meets the sharp cooling effect of this huge body of water to produce great blasts of wind.