Emergency Road Trip to Turkana

Presenting a small selection of images from an incredible 8 day safari up to the Lake Turkana region. With L'Albero della Vita, we took to the road, after having filled our huge safari vehicle with sacks of potatoes, onions, cooking oil, water (litres and litres of it), dozens of loaves of bread, packages of sweets for the kids, and so many more things to distribute to the highly needy inhabitants of the areas we would be passing on our way up to Loyangalani - our final destination, on the eastern shore of Lake Turkana.

The things I saw and felt could hardly be captured on film, especially those experienced through Samburu land where you risk your life if you take a photo. With AK-47 wielding pastoralists and their belief that you lose your soul if your photo is taken, which explains why we seem so odd to them, soulless and ok with it. If I were a better writer I would be able to go into great detail about the exquisitely adorned women and children who we encountered, picked up and offered rides through the long distances between their homes and the village centres, I'd be able to tell you how touched I was by each and every one of them, their gratitude for our small act of offering them a lift, their toothless laughs and wide eyed children, scared at the sight of their first white man. If I were a better writer I'd be able to describe to you the African night, how the milky way ceases to be something far away and incomprehensible, but something so much more tangible, edible, malleable. But I digress. For now, I'll stick to what I do: take photos.

Up in Loyangalani, the hill where scenes from the Constant Gardner were shot.

Camel herding through Samburu Land

Sunset on Lake Turkana

Love,

R