Loiyangalani

Wind hits first — constant, sand-carrying, warm. Then the lake appears, impossibly green against the desert brown, and the settlement's low roofs resolve from the haze. Loiyangalani sits where the Chalbi meets Lake Turkana: four distinct peoples sharing one water source and remarkably little else.

Loiyangalani — 'place of many trees' in Samburu, a name its palms only half honour now — is the cultural crossroads of Turkana's south-eastern shore, where Turkana, Samburu, Rendille and El Molo lives interleave. The El Molo, among the smallest peoples in Africa with fewer than a thousand members, still fish the alkaline water from doum-palm rafts in their nearby villages. The hilltop Desert Museum sets the basin's peoples and geology in order. Most days the wind does the talking, spring water feeds the palms, and the jade lake changes colour all day.