Sunday January 11, 2016
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Jet lagged from the 10 hour time change, exhausted from the 60 hours of air travel and 4 hours of very tense driving, we jumped right to work. After a 7 AM typical Kakuma breakfast of chai mendazi – milk tea and African donuts - the 7 geophysicists and 2 person film crew split into two groups. 5 of us unpacked and checked the equipment shipped in 16 large wooden crates weighing 1400 kg. The other 4 of us packed into a 4X4 with one of the South Sudanese refugee WASH students, Michael, and traveled to approximately 30 water wells located in the Camp. These wells included a mix of hand dug boreholes, machine drilled deeper wells producing from bedrock and overburden sand aquifers, hand pump water wells, solar powered wells, wind powered wells, etc. The point of this reconnaissance was to map in the locations of as many boreholes as we could find so as we could tie our geophysical survey lines to points of known geology, water levels, water chemistry, etc. It also gave everyone an opportunity to acquaint themselves with one of the largest refugee camps in the world, the host Turkana community, working in 40 degree heat, and eating njere in the Ethiopian Market at the most notable eating establishment and coffee house of the Kakuma Refugee Camp, Franco’s.

Saturday January 10, 2016
David Eggers, in his powerful and gripping biography/autobiography of one of the Lost Boys of Sudan, describes the 4 year journey on foot of 8 year old Valentino Achak Deng from a small village in Sudan to Kakuma. During his walk, Deng survives a massacre of his village by marauders on horseback, strafing and bombing by the Sudanese air force, attacks by lions, near death from starvation and thirst, being hunted down by the Ethiopian army, and of course many windstorms of utter hopelessness. Finally, in 1992, Deng arrives with thousands of Lost Boys to the newly opened Kakuma Refugee Camp. Nevertheless, Deng’s closest brush with death comes in 2001 on the drive from the Kakuma Refugee Camp to the County capital of Lodwar, where he is accompanying a youth basketball team from the Camp to a tournament, an exciting foray out of the Camp for all. The truck rolls, the much loved driver/fianced Japanese NGO worker is killed, Deng is unconscious and, along with others, badly injured and near death. Not only is this 123 kilometer stretch of highway (yes,this is part of the national highway system) noted for being the worst road in Kenya, but it has deteriorated significantly since Achak Deng drove the road in 2001. After 2 ½ days of flying to Nairobi, and then Lodwar, the geophysics crew departed Lodwar in three 4 X4’s at 5:30 PM. We survived the drive, largely by staying OFF the road and driving along parallel ditches, though we did get two flat tires, and arrived in Kakuma 3 hours after darkness at 9:30 PM. Our driver, John, who was in Kakuma in 2001, pointed out where Achak Deng’s truck rolled in 2001.