North Horr, a remote settlement in northern Kenya, offers a unique glimpse into the harsh yet beautiful realities of life in a desert environment. Built around a natural oasis, it serves as a vital water source and a hub for nomadic communities. Despite its challenges, North Horr captivates with its stark landscapes, resilient people, and the unexpected beauty found in the heart of the Chalbi Desert. This article explores some fascinating facts about North Horr and its surrounding region.
Map of Marsabit County, Kenya, highlighting the location of North Horr.
A Journey to North Horr
The journey to North Horr is an adventure in itself, often described as punishing yet rewarding. The overland route takes you through changing road surfaces and vast, empty landscapes. As you leave the sealed highway behind, you enter a world of gravel tracks, shifting sands, and bone-rattling terrain.
Along the way, you may encounter:
- Gas: A village that serves as a reminder of the comforts often taken for granted.
- The "Pocket Tree": An acacia tree with a symbiotic relationship with ants, where the tree provides food and shelter, and the ants protect it from larger animals.
- Turkana Herders: Young children tending to their families' animals in the harsh semi-desert, highlighting the realities of life in this region.
The Oasis of North Horr
North Horr is built around a natural oasis, a feature that dictates the life and rhythm of the town. The town itself is described as a vague agglomeration of grass or mud huts and tin shacks, sprinkled with a few permanent concrete structures. With the smaller, outlying settlements, North Horr numbers around 5,000 inhabitants.
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An acacia tree, also known as "Pocket Tree", with a symbiotic relationship with ants.
The town is built around a waterhole, as are all the towns and villages in this area. Hundreds of camels can be found waiting to be watered.
The People of North Horr
The local Gabbra people believe that being photographed will take their blood away. The scenes are so photogenic, it's hard to not want to walk around with a camera. However, it is important to respect the local culture. Camels play a significant role in their lives, symbolizing wealth and status. These "ships of the desert" are essential for transportation, fetching water, and providing meat and milk.
Chalbi Desert: A Unique Landscape
North Horr serves as a gateway to the Chalbi Desert, an immense wasteland of clay and white salt. The name 'Chalbi' comes from the local Gabbra language, and means 'bare and salty'. The desert is one of the hottest and most arid regions in Kenya, characterized by volcanic craters and lava flows. During periods of heavy rainfall, large areas flood, making the desert crossing impossible.
Key features of the Chalbi Desert include:
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- Endless expanses of salty, cracked earth.
- Mirages that create illusions of water.
- Extreme temperatures, often reaching scorching levels.
- A surprising abundance of plants adapted to the harsh environment.
Despite its harsh conditions, the Chalbi Desert is home to various wildlife, including impala, baboons, and ostriches. It's a place where the stark and austere beauty captivates, offering a unique and unforgettable experience.
Singing Wells
Near North Horr, you can find the famous Gabbra singing wells. It's not the wells themselves that sing, of course, it's the people tending to them. In an age-old tradition local Gabbra herders bring their animals to drink and to fetch water for themselves and their cattle. The wells are deep, with crude steps cut into the walls: each ledge holds a young boy, part of a human chain to haul up precious water from the depths of the earth. Rudimentary tin cans and leaky leather buckets hoisted by long frayed ropes are passed from person to person, hand to hand, one by one. It's a laborious task.
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And all the while they sing. From each well comes a distinctive, simple song, each family's ballad being different to the next one. It is undoubtedly a joyful way of making the drudgery seem less of a tiresome slog, with the tempo of the music defining the rhythm of the action much in the same way as we would rock along to music in the gym back home.
Gabbra singing wells, where herders sing while drawing water for their livestock.
The singing also has another, more important, purpose: with so many animals and their handlers in one place, confusion is the order of the day, cattle mingling aimlessly here and there. However, over time the animals have learned to recognise 'their' song and subsequently head to the correct well to be watered. Now that is a great connection between man and beast!
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Lake Turkana: The Jade Sea
Not far from North Horr lies Lake Turkana, the largest alkaline lake in the world and the largest lake in Kenya. At a length of 300 km in North-South direction and a width of 50 km, Lake Turkana is also the worlds largest permanent desert lake. Reaching the lake after days of monochrome landscapes, the sparkling waters are almost bewitching with their vivid shades of turquoise and blue. The iridescent colors of the lake dramatically counterbalance the black and almost lifeless surrounds.
Key facts about Lake Turkana:
- It has a longer shoreline than Kenya's entire Indian Ocean coast.
- It is the most northerly of the Great Rift Valley lakes.
- It is larger than Warwickshire and about the same size as the US state of Delaware.
The lake's alkaline waters, exotic birdlife, and the tribespeople who have managed to survive the harsh conditions make it a destination of great interest. The Lake Turkana National Parks are inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1997 for its contribution to the conservation of wild animals and the understanding of paleo-environments.
Marsabit County
North Horr is located in Marsabit County, the second largest county in Kenya after Turkana county. Marsabit County covers a surface area of 66,923.1 square kilometres. The county is characterized by vast lowlands ranging from 400-700 ms interspersed with several mountain ranges reaching altitudes of more than 2,700 ms. Administratively, Marsabit County is divided into six sub-counties: Laisamis, Loiyangalani, North Horr, South Horr, Moyale and Central Marsabit.
Key Facts about Marsabit County
| Feature | Details |
|---|---|
| Area | 66,923.1 km² |
| Population | 459,785 |
| Main Economic Activity | Pastoralism (80% of residents) |
| Administrative Divisions | Laisamis, Loiyangalani, North Horr, South Horr, Moyale, Central Marsabit |
About 80% of the residents of Marsabit County are pastoralist, obtaining their livelihood from livestock and livestock based industries, and 10% are agriculturalists living mainly around the higher area of Mount Marsabit. The rest are involved in trade and salaried jobs.
Lake Turkana, also known as the Jade Sea, offers a striking contrast to the surrounding desert landscape.
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