The Beagle, a 2008 Toyota LC on a drift across Africa, piloted by Jim (FitzRoy) and Ann Colleen.
The Beagle, a 2008 Toyota LC on a drift across Africa, piloted by Jim (FitzRoy) and Ann Colleen.
Merciless winds. Rocks. Heat. Desolation. 
Undrinkable water. Terrible roads. This is how I imagine the aggregate of Lake Turkana, where some of the very oldest human fossils have been discovered and where early hominids, habilis and robustus, roamed for more than 2 million years. My imagination proved not far off. It is hot. The windblown sand scours skin. There is no water for us to drink or use for washing. Since leaving Loiyangalani we have seen no other white people, no travelers. Lake Turkana is windy, barren and inhospitable, difficult to drive to and dangerous, all of these things are true. It is also wild and beautiful and the people who somehow manage to live here are tough as the rocks they walk on. They live in small squat huts 
built of branches and covered with whatever is available – plastic sheeting, cardboard, old fabrics. Anything to hold back the relentless winds and sand. Early hominids did not have these. They did not build or create houses. They used one tool – the rock shard – and only that one tool, unchanged, for a million years. Imagine there is only one iPhone and it is used for millennia. Talk about stuck in a rut. But when you find something that works, stick with it right?
So how did early hominids even get to the point where they 
walked upright on this ragged landscape, using their single tool? How did the quadrupedal creature evolve into the bipedal? We may never know. We do know that in Africa thirty-five million years (!) ago a creature called Aegyptopithecus evolved with ape-like characteristics and eighteen million years after that, Proconsul evolved with a somewhat ape-like anatomy. Then another seventeen million years spin by with little fossil record until Kenyapithecus came into the picture. The earth followed its trail around the sun for still another fifteen million years before 
the hominid forms appeared, these creatures who so graciously left us their bones and footprints fossilized on the land. There are more questions than answers now and the answers lay here in Kenya at Lake Turkana, if anywhere.
In case you were wondering, the time it took us to grind our way over the rocks and out of the lake valley was three hours – a short time span compared to the millions of years this lake has been a part of mankind. Above the lake, on hilltop after hilltop, bright new wind turbines stand tall. The wind is so strong I can hardly open the truck door yet 
none of the turbines are spinning. Someone must have forgotten to plug them in, we laugh. As tools go, these aren’t being used today.
Eldoret is about an hour east of the Ugandan border; the town has a busy fabric production industry and an agriculture base with wheat and cane crops. Traffic is nuts as is often the outcome of people being able to afford vehicles and no time or money available to upgrade streets. Robots (traffic lights) have been abandoned, hanging in pieces at intersections. Roundabouts are more efficient anyway and traffic policing creates jobs, a handy band-aid. By all appearances Eldoret is a twenty-first century Kenyan city, if a bit bedraggled. Here on the eve of the latest Kenyan elections the atmosphere is tense; there are very few 
tourists. People tell us tourism has been dismal since August, and we are warmly received at the Naiberi River OverLand Stop for a four-day stay.
Created by Raj Sarat, a Kenyan-born Indian man whose family has been in Eldoret three generations, each Overland campsite features covered areas with lots of room, expanding our real estate by about 100 percent – a big plus since it is raining cats and dogs periodically every day. There is a place to hang damp clothes under cover and a clothes line out in the sun should the sun shine long enough. We pull in, level the truck, unroll the Fiama awning, and set up dinner in about 15 minutes. The neighboring campers are just returning from Lake Turkana, our next 
destination, and they have excellent road information; we talk about the huge dam being built in Ethiopia that will impact the northern tribes. It would be interesting to return here in 10 years to see how it all falls out – the dam, the elections, life.
In no hurry, we stay four days at Overland Stop then take off for Lake Baringo. Without any preamble the road climbs to the summit of the Great Rift Valley then drops us down into the valley floor with a thud. Leaving behind the rain and greenery we have now landed in the arid tribal lands of Northern Kenya. Welcome to the Great Rift Valley. Running from Israel to Mozambique, the rift will in time push the massive chunk of Africa to its east off of the continent and into the Indian Ocean. 
Where we will be when that happens? Maybe colonizing Mars. One can hope.
At Lake Baringo the shore is cluttered with drowned trees and the ruins of resorts, boat docks and houses. The lake has risen to bury 100 meters of land and everything on it under water. Where men herded their cattle, they now guide birdwatching boats for tourists like us. The rise was gradual but inexplicable, caused by water seeping up from the Rift, aided by heavy rains and climate change. The lake is still lovely but the only way to see the shore is from the water, there’s no beach to walk along. Birding is good as the boat can maneuver into shallow coves and hidden places. The guide procures a couple of fish from a local and we chum for Fish 
Eagles – the eagles know the boat has a treat and they put on a show. Two other couples are camped with us and we all sit down one morning with our maps to share road information and stories, then everyone goes off in different directions. Our direction is to Lake Turkana, and back in time we go.
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