KENYA, HAPPEN WHAT CAN | France 5 | Les Routes de l'Impossible

Kenya is developing at full speed, but behind the buildings of Nairobi, the capital, and the savannah very popular with tourists, hides a completely different reality: that of Kenya’s convicts.

Climate change is cutting the country in two. In the North, entire regions are suffering from a deep drought while in the South, populations are threatened by rising sea levels. The bad tracks that cross Kenya do not help…

Adam sweats blood and water in the hope of paying for his business school. To get there, the young man becomes a delivery man. Every week, he buys 100 kilos of fish from Lake Victoria fishermen to sell to the cannery located 70 kilometers from his home. But holes and difficult passages, often maintained by the villagers in order to monetize the rescue endanger its goods “Sometimes I get stuck for hours, under a blazing sun. And if that’s the case, I can say goodbye to my merchandise.” Adam is engaged in a race against time and sun… His truck is not refrigerated and the little ice on board melts quickly!

David, taxi driver, never takes the road with less than 15 customers for 8 seats! It must be said that travelers to the Turkana region are rare. Solar fire burns the earth and herds, some try to resist and dig the beds of dry rivers to find drink.  “It’s been more than 3 years since a drop of rain fell around here. If hell were to have a face, it would look like this region.”

While some land is drying up, on the side of Lake “Baringo” it is quite the opposite! Its level has risen by 12 meters in a few years, flooding hotels now abandoned… The inhabitants of the lake have lost their jobs and now find themselves facing a terrible danger… Huge crocodiles attack the inhabitants of villages that were once far from the banks. As for the school, it has become an island and children who do not have the means to pay for the passage by motorboat like Georges’ are forced to cross the lake on makeshift rafts, among crocodiles and hippos.

Those who flee these ungrateful lands leave for Lake Victoria and try their luck on an island that looks like Eldorado… The fish-rich waters surrounding Migingo promise a good pay but there is a flip side to the coin… There are more than a thousand of them piling up on this rock smaller than a football field. “Here there is no running water, no electricity, no toilet. We are prisoners of this hell. But life on earth is not necessarily more beautiful… ».