NAIVASHA
\nThe tourist boats that normally ply Kenya\u2019s famed Lake Naivasha have had a different task in recent weeks: evacuating hundreds of flooded homes.
\nAlthough the lake\u2019s level has been rising for more than a decade and has repeatedly breached its banks, locals in the modest district of Kihoto are still astonished by the scale this year.
\n\u201cIt hasn\u2019t happened like this before,\u201d said one resident, Rose Alero.
\nThe Rift Valley lake has traveled up to 1.5 kilometers inland, say local officials, an unprecedented distance.
\n\u201cPeople are suffering,\u201d said Alero, a 51-year-old grandmother, adding that many neighbors were sick.
\nIn her home, the water is waist-deep, and toilets are overflowing throughout the district.
\n\u201cPeople are stuck… they have nowhere to go.\u201d
\nOthers have lost everything. Hundreds of homes are completely submerged, churches in ruins, and police stations underwater, surrounded by floating vegetation.
\nDuring a sudden rush of water, children were forced to leave school on makeshift rafts.
\nJoyce Cheche, head of disaster risk management for Nakuru County, estimates that 7,000 people have been displaced by the rising waters, which have also impacted wildlife and threaten tourism and other businesses.
\nThe county has assisted with the transportation of victims and implemented health measures, she said, but there has been no financial compensation for now.
\nWorkers in the flower sector \u2014 a major exporter \u2014 are refusing to show up for fear of cholera and landslides.
\nShe also mentioned the risk of dangerous encounters with hippos, who are numerous in the lake.
\n\u201cWe didn\u2019t see it coming,\u201d said Cheche.
\nOn the lake\u2019s edge, the bare trunks of once-verdant acacia trees lie submerged in water that continues to spread at around a meter per day.
\nThis phenomenon is observed in other lakes in the Rift Valley and has displaced hundreds of thousands of people.
\nNumerous studies attribute it primarily to increased rainfall caused by climate change.
\nBut Kenyan geologist John Lagat, regional manager at the state-owned Geothermal Development Corporation, says the main cause is tectonics as the lakes lie along a long geological fault.
\nWhen English settlers arrived at the end of the 19th century, the lake was even larger than it is today before shifting plates reduced its size to just one kilometer in diameter by 1921.
\nFurther tectonic shifts meant underground outflows were increasingly sealed, trapping the water, he said, though he added that increased rainfall and land degradation caused by population growth were playing a \u201csubstantial\u201d role in flooding, too.
\n\u201cWe are very worried,\u201d said Alero in her flooded home, fearing the next rainy season.
\n\u201cWe can\u2019t tell what will happen.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NAIVASHA The tourist boats that normally ply Kenya\u2019s famed Lake Naivasha have had a different task in recent weeks: evacuating hundreds of flooded homes. Although the lake\u2019s level has been rising for more than a decade and has repeatedly breached its banks, locals in the modest district of Kihoto are still astonished by the scale […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":515611,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-515591","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n