Loki, Kenya, could have been the desert town from Star Wars. Loki, was the last town before the Sudanese border. Originally a very small place it became the center of the UN's relief program to south Sudan. At it's hight, one flight took off or landed from is dirt runway ever 2 minutes!
The northern extreme of Kenya is home of the Turkana people. One of the pastoralist of sub-sahara Africa. They have mostly been left alone through history. The live in a place where the destert sun is so un-relenting that at time vehicles can not pass. Not too far from Loki is Lake Turkana, where Leaky made his famous discovery decades ago. It is also home to 200lbs Nile perch and a huge population of Nile Crocs.
Now suddenly, the Turkana have people driving through their land, and one of the largest relief operations in the history of the UN taking off from right in the heart of their territory. So it is no real supprise to me that many of them had taken to ambushing the convoys of trucks driving food and medicine to the airbase at Loki.
I remember my first night spent in Loki. I was with a small survey team and we said a place called "Kate Camp". It was called that because a woman named Kate ran it... imagine that. It was really just a bunch of tents set up inside a chainlink fence. There was a kitchen where they served up some pretty good food. Anyway, my first night was spent at Kate Camp, not sleeping.
I wasn't sleeping because every few minutes or so gun shots could be heard. Sometime in the distance sometimes very close. I learned later that "thugs" would try to enter the town and take whatever was not guarded. These shots were the guards taking "pot-shots" at them. I remember laying there just waiting for a stray bullet to hit me... it never did.
For the first time in my life I knew it was morning by the call to prayers coming from the local mosque. I was so relieved...
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