Turkana ST

The Sunday Times November 2013

Early morning in Nairobi “This is the rainy season,” a pilot says “difficult flying in Kenya now, Nairobi is high, 2000 feet and the weather patterns are unpredictable, but it is still early, at some point there will be a gap and when it comes, take it.”

A handful of blue, we take a right hand turn out. I hold the map on my knees and watch the green lines of the GPS. In the lull the sky is open, all around this space it is grey; the clouds are opaque and ponderous. “Storm clouds,” Tamiko says, “we will have to avoid them, how high are the peaks, we can probable only go up as 6500feet because of the cloud cover, we may have to fly around them.”
We sidestep a storm, and fly over the Nairobi suburb of Karen, named for Karen Blixen; then the Ngong Hills, the clouds are heavy around the four raised knuckles, from the ground they are benign, now they are malevolent. Below us Hog Ranch, the sometime residence of Peter Beard, khaki cloth walls hold within them many journeys. I could die in the Ngong Hills; disappear in the indifferent sky, and who would know.
“Loyangalani; come in, this is Alpha Tango Sierra, two on board, request landing.”
Below us is a barren inhospitable landscape next to a jade sea, Lake Turkana, always jade, always the sea.
The plane is surrounded by people, a one legged man offers to be our askari, “I will guard the air bird,” he says. A child holds out a rock, yellow and sapphire, prehistoric, “buy, buy, some shillings?” A man in uniform asks, “when you leave take me with you, I need a ride to Nairobi.”
In 1888 the lake was originally named Lake Rudolf to honour Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria by Count Sámuel Teleki de Szék, the first European to stand on its shoreline; it is situated in the Kenyan Rift Valley, with its furthest northern end crossing into Ethiopia; it is the world’s largest alkaline permanent desert lake. I lean down and put the tip of my finger into the cobalt water, salty. The rocks in the surrounding areas are predominantly volcanic; Central Island is an active volcano. It spits and sighs, a murder on the shoreline, figures dancing death. The winds off South Island are hot and strong; as the lake warms and cools more slowly than the land so sudden violent storms are always a possibility. The hot wind blows a the shadow of what once was, I hear the tinkle of glass and smell the empty bottles which once contained laughter.

The Oasis Club, our room for the nights to come, lies at the southern tip of Lake Turkana, the closest village being Loyangalani. The lodge smells of decadence, a rotten palimpsest, an already forgotten sparkling memory, only the perfume of the glory days lingers, the nights of legend and revelry, the sounds of an interruption to the accepted banality of everyday life.
“Drink?” says Wolfgang Deschler, the German owner of the hotel, he drinks gin with a touch of water, “you ask me to tell you stories, why should I tell you, what can I say that you cannot imagine? Andy Warhol, he painted on the walls of room 16, or was it Francis Bacon? Bianca Jagger, a beauty, her eyes, aah the last thing left in nature after we have devastated it is the beauty of a woman.” Wolfgang lifts the glass, his hands are scarred, his fingernails black, his face covered in pustules of excess. “Oh yes the Oasis Club was a famous place to escape to, Mick Jagger, he was married to Bianca then, and David Bowie, drank double gin with Iman, and Peter Beard, he hung around the swimming pool calling to my cook who he photographed, look at that photograph,” he points to the wall behind him, “she was Russian the blonde, and that is Samson, the cook; Peter, ha, half Tarzan, half Byron. Lauren Hutton was here with Peter, he loved beauty, there is a photograph of her with the lake in the background, it is beautiful, yes, so was she, she was magnificent. Iman and Peter, look over there, the footprints in the picture, the letter, they left their footprints behind …”
We walk between the gods of Western iconography, touch the tattered photographs that Peter Beard threw away, kiss the footprints of Iman, and know how so caught in the stars we are.
In my room the window slats are rusted, the windows open, a green curtain is fluttering in the hot wind that blows. In the bathroom, wall tiles decorated with the words Lake Rudolf, the picture of a jade sea, the bathroom is small, as small as the amount of people who still remember this place.
“A few years ago,” Wolfgang says “an elderly man arrived here, he said his name was Cornwell. He stayed three days and drank a few beers, then he left, someone told me he wrote a book under his pseudonym, John Le Carré, The Constant Gardener, somewhere in it there is a tribute to me, I believe, something about a man in an oasis of gin.”
In 1968, when Deschler took over the Oasis Club, 500 people lived in Loiyangalani; the current population is over 15,000. Only very few people have jobs, but the discovery of oil to the north will bring more, and it will bring a change, to the lives of those that live here, as the pictures of Peter Beard brought change, a different kind of change.
“He would take photographs of naked Turkana women, and the El Moyo,” Wolfgang continues, “the elders of the tribes hated him for this.”
Wolfgang with his staff of twenty five at the Oasis is one of the area’s biggest employers. Only regular food deliveries by UNICEF sustain people in this harsh northern region.
I stand on the veranda where Mike Jagger once looked out and pointed to the edge of the lake and the huts of the El Moyo while Peter Beard poured him more champagne. Ten years ago an old man who lived on the lake shore in a desiccated straw hut died, he was the last person to speak the El Moro language. Now long lines form in front of the distribution station in Loiyangalani, where tear proof sacks bearing the blue imprint of UNICEF arrive.
As the day comes to an end, the blood-red sun sinks into the lake and the trucks stir up dust. Wolfgang raises his glass to toast the trucks. “I’m an expert on futility.” he murmurs.
I feel the angry wind that rages through the highest buildings, through the waters of the jade sea.
What have we done?