SUNDAY TIMES – JUNE 2023

St Turkana

“We must go on a journey, somewhere, a destination; after all ‘we are a seeking generation’. How about Lake Turkana, the Jade Sea, as it is known, for its waters glitter like a precious stone against the harsh dark dry skin of the land; it is the lands nourishment, and yet it is not for it is saline, undrinkable, a paradox? Also up there is the building designed by Francis Kéré, the architect who won the 2022 Pritzker award, the first African to win it.

And so we go. Along the Trans African highway, the main route into Uganda, Ethiopia and South Sudan.

Lodwar is a border town. There are many people on the new road and the bridge that crosses the Turkwel, or Tir-kol, its name means a river that withstands the wilderness. The Turkwel begins in Mount Elgon and the Cherangani Hills, then crosses the Southern Turkana Plains and the Loturerei Desert and finally finds its destination in Lake Turkana.

Lake Turkana, like Timbuktu, is a mystical place. For the tourist, as I am, seeking and looking into the lives of others, it is here that David Bowie and Iman enjoyed their  at the Oasis Lodge, here that Peter Beard took the photographs of Nile crocodile, the Turkana and El Moyo people for the book Eyelids of Morning and who said that the land was filled with dragons, or pebble worms, who roamed at will, and where he learnt of the flat earth from a sceptical Turkana man who laughed at him when he said that the earth may be round, and where, for a brief period, he sought the truth about a space before others entered it and so fixed its destiny. And here David Cornwell stayed for three days and then left to write a book under his pseudonym, John Le Carré, The Constant Gardener.

A wild and exciting place; mystical; and yet, looking at it from the perspective of the Turkana who live in the region, excitement and wildness, mystery and romance, are probably the last ideas or sensations that they may have. This excitement is not their concern for they, in this arid place, dead flat and endless, where the wind hisses cruelly and the waterless land is punitive and exacting are tenacious. Here they drive squads of motorbikes, boda boda, that carry people from town to town, use camels which do not need much water to transport goods, fish in the lake, taking what is there to make it work.

In 1888 the lake was originally named Lake Rudolf to honour Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria by Count Sámuel Teleki de Szék who, with von Höhnel, were the first Europeans to stand on its shoreline. The pair arrived at the lake as scientists; Von Höhnel was the expedition’s cartographer and diarist. Teleki and Höhnel made some observations on the climate, the flora and the fauna of the area. But, in addition to this, they were also enthusiastic hunters who enjoyed shooting indiscriminately at anything that moved.

But the Turkana who lived there never knew who Rudolf was, they did not know where Austria was, and neither did they care, and so they continued to call the lake, Anam a Cheper.

Do we make places into legends I wonder? Are those who live there merely blurred shadows in our memory? They do not speak our language, and have no inclination to do so; our language records only their silence and the romance of their space.

In 1975 the lake was renamed Lake Turkana.

Lake Turkana 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. The rocks in the surrounding areas are predominantly volcanic; North, South and Central Island are all volcanic, they spit and sigh as if there is a murder taking place on the shorelines, and as you watch Central Island on it, it seems as if there are figures there who dance with death in the black volcanic sand. For the Turkana, these islands are named for where they are in the lake, in the centre, north and south, they are not quixotic or wonderfully scenic; they are merely there, a geographical location in the waters. There are always storms over the lake for the winds that blow off the islands are hot and strong and as the lake warms and cools more slowly than the land so sudden violent storms are always a possibility.

In 2019 Francis Kéré, an architect from Burkina Faso, was asked by Ludwig, a Bavarian prince, and aid worker who worked in the Turkana district on water projects, to design and build an educational facility in Turkana. Ludwig, and his friend Brizan, who met each other while doing aid work in the area, had a dream; they both wished to establish an IT school in the Turkana region for up here there were few educational facilities in which the people could learn and develop skills. Ludwig, from Germany, white and privileged, and Brizan, a local Turkana and now a teacher; an unlikely pair, and yet in the synergy of difference and a mingling of like-minded caring they did it.   And so this campus, which is more than a hundred kilometres from Lodwar, the only major economic hub in the area, the Start-up Lions IT campus was established. The aim of the school is to provide computer workstations and computer education for learners across various IT professions so that unskilled and untrained people can have access to the tools needed for the 4^th Industrial Revolution.

Francis Kéré: ‘The design is inspired by some of the best architects around, termites. We wanted to build something that mirrored their incredible structures. This is how the wind towers came about … Like the termite mounds, the building is made from local material; rock was taken directly from the site. This makes it durable, what is there weathers the harsh climate … It is built over two levels that cling to the natural slope, mixing inside and out through a series of external staircases, walkways and terraces that envelope the structure so that occupiers can almost crawl all over it, as if it were another part of the natural landscape.’

There are three geometrical towers that emerge from the building’s mounds, beautiful and imposing, but also functional. As a termite mound is structured so are the ventilation shafts, a passive ventilation system where the air circulates; air enters the room from below then it pushes the hot air that is already inside out of the ventilation towers.

The following day we go to Central Island.

The boat is an outboard motor boat. We put on red life jackets for even though this is a lake it has waves as if it is the ocean, the waters are rough and the waves are threateningly big. The wind is searing, it howls ghoul like as we jump the waves and forge our way into the waters. Within minutes I am soaked through, the boat jumps and bounces and I have nothing to cushion myself from the blows. All around are small and sometimes bigger boats, their nets spread out and kept buoyant by old plastic water bottles. Our captain swerves, slows down, somehow does not cut through them or become entangled in the web-like tapestry. Exhilaration cannot be put into words; it is a fire burning on water, raging and cooling, in terrible and terrific gusts, we rage into space that is not of this world.

And then it is there; emerging from the blue-green waters, Central Island. It is made up of more than a dozen craters and cones, only three of which are filled by small lakes. The two largest lakes are partially fill craters and are a kilometre wide and about eighty metres deep, they are volcanic and continually belch sulphurous smoke and steam; there are also three other crater lakes, Crocodile Lake, Flamingo Lake and Tilapia Lake. The volcanoes have created monstrous upheavals leaving the land scoured with mountains, gorges and jagged boulders, the beach is coal black lava that lies against the older red rocks. It is haunting and haunted, here are the ghosts of a wilderness, a gift of nature that we create and destroy, something that the pace of human life hastens to diminish. I can hear the land spit and sigh, spectres, murky figures walk and run, a death dance.

And so the lake will grow and expand, dry up or flood.

The island will one day fall and drown in the waters.

The stories of Turkana and its mystique will fade.

The building will one day be eroded by time and use.

Things always move and change, but I have been here.