Kenya’s Beautiful Mysteries Part 2: Lakes That Change, Boil and Rise

If you have lived in Kenya long enough, you have probably heard somebody say something like: “Usiende huko usiku.” “Don’t drink that water.” “Those waters are not normal.” Or perhaps the classic: “Hapo kuna mambo.”

There is something wonderfully human about the way we respond to unusual places. Before laboratories, satellites and scientific instruments, people still had to make sense of what they saw. They watched the seasons. They watched animals. They watched the colour of water. They noticed when a spring became hot or when a familiar landscape changed.

And they told stories. Some stories became warnings. Others became legends. Some became spiritual traditions. Science eventually arrived with thermometers, water samples, geological maps and satellite images. And sometimes, the scientific explanation is just as fascinating as the story.

So, for the second journey into Kenya’s beautiful mysteries, let’s visit four places where the landscape seems to have a personality of its own.

1. The Lake That Turned Red

Imagine waking up one morning, looking toward a familiar lake and discovering that parts of it have turned the colour of blood. That is not the kind of thing that encourages a peaceful breakfast.

In 2025, sections of Lake Bogoria in Baringo County developed a striking reddish colour, alarming some people who witnessed the change. For communities living around a lake already known for its dramatic landscapes, hot springs and geysers, seeing the water suddenly change colour was understandably unsettling.

People began asking questions. Was something wrong beneath the Earth? Was the water contaminated? Was the lake sending a warning? Some religious interpretations even connected the unusual colour to divine judgement. And you can understand why. Water is supposed to look like water. When it suddenly looks like something else, the imagination gets busy.

But Lake Bogoria has a scientific explanation that is arguably more fascinating than the frightening theories. The red colour can be associated with blooms of salt-loving microorganisms, including algae such as Dunaliella salina. These tiny organisms are specialists at surviving in extremely salty environments. And they have a secret weapon — a pigment called beta-carotene. Yes, the same general pigment family responsible for the orange colour in carrots.

When conditions become favourable, enormous numbers of these microorganisms can multiply. Their pigments can dominate the appearance of the water, producing striking red, orange or pink colours. So the lake has not turned into blood. It has essentially become a giant natural chemistry experiment.

And there is an important connection to one of Kenya’s most famous sights: flamingos. The chemical conditions of Rift Valley lakes help determine what microscopic organisms thrive there. Those microorganisms, in turn, influence the food available to flamingos. Recent monitoring by the Kenya Wildlife Service has shown that changing water levels across Kenya Rift Valley lakes are altering salinity and alkalinity, affecting the microorganisms that lesser flamingos depend upon.

In other words, the colour of a lake is not merely a pretty photograph. It can tell us something about what is happening inside the ecosystem. And that is where the story becomes bigger than the red water. The lake is speaking. Science has simply learned some of its vocabulary.

2. The Lake That Can Change Its Personality

Now let’s go somewhere that sounds almost like a geography prank. Lake Naivasha is freshwater. Just beside it lies Lake Oloidien. The two lakes are close enough to be described as twins. Yet Oloidien has a rather unusual habit — depending on the conditions, it can shift between being relatively fresh and becoming saline.

The answer lies partly in the complicated relationship between the two lakes. The Rift Valley was not always the landscape we know today. Geological changes created enormous basins and altered drainage patterns over millions of years. Lake Oloidien is effectively a closed basin. Its connection with Lake Naivasha and the amount of water entering and leaving the system can influence its chemistry.

When water levels change, the concentration of dissolved salts can change too. Water comes in. Water evaporates. Minerals remain. The more water evaporates relative to the amount entering the lake, the more concentrated the dissolved salts can become. It is a little like making soup and allowing too much water to boil away — the ingredients don’t disappear with the steam. They become more concentrated.

And there is something else worth appreciating. The behaviour of Oloidien is part of a much larger geological story. The East African Rift is literally a landscape shaped by enormous movements beneath our feet. The Earth’s crust is being pulled apart along the rift system, creating faults, volcanic features and basins that collect water. So when you look across a Rift Valley lake, you are not simply looking at water. You are looking at the surface expression of a geological process that has been unfolding for millions of years.

That is quite a thought the next time you’re stuck in traffic near Naivasha.

3. Where the Earth Boils Beside Flamingos

There are few combinations that sound more Kenyan than this: flamingos, a soda lake, hot springs, and geysers shooting water into the air. Welcome to Lake Bogoria.

The lake is one of the most spectacular examples of Kenya’s geothermal personality. Along its shores are numerous hot springs and geothermal features. Scientific studies have documented around 200 hot alkaline springs around the lake, along with geysers and mineral deposits created by hydrothermal activity.

For somebody seeing the landscape for the first time, the sight can feel almost unreal. The lake itself is alkaline and saline. Flamingos gather around its waters. Steam rises from the ground. Hot water emerges from underground. And in some places, geysers have historically blasted water dramatically into the air. Local communities have lived with these unusual geological features for generations, and naturally occurring hot water has practical as well as cultural significance.

The Great Rift Valley is volcanically active because the Earth’s crust beneath the region is undergoing major geological change. Heat from deeper within the Earth warms underground water. That heated water travels through cracks and fractures in rocks. When pressure and geological conditions allow it to reach the surface, we get hot springs. And under particular conditions, we get geysers. It is essentially an enormous underground plumbing system — except the plumber is the Earth, and the boiler is several kilometres beneath your feet.

Lake Bogoria is therefore not simply a lake with some hot water around it. It is evidence that Kenya sits above an extraordinarily active geological environment. The same forces that helped create the Rift Valley are still influencing the landscape today. When people describe Kenya as a country of dramatic scenery, they sometimes make it sound as though the landscape is merely beautiful. It isn’t. It is active. It is changing. It is still being built.

4. When Kenya’s Lakes Rise and Swallow the Land

This final phenomenon is less of a tourist mystery and more of a reminder that nature can change our lives in very real ways. Across Kenya’s Rift Valley, several lakes have experienced major rises in water levels over the past decade and a half. Lake Naivasha, Lake Baringo, Lake Bogoria, Lake Nakuru — all have expanded. And in some places, water has moved into areas where people once farmed, lived or operated businesses.

NASA recently documented substantial expansion of Lake Naivasha using satellite imagery, with the lake’s depth increasing by roughly seven metres since 2010. That is not a puddle getting slightly bigger. Seven metres is taller than many houses.

The changes have affected wildlife, agriculture and communities. And perhaps unsurprisingly, when a lake begins occupying land that people remember as dry, speculation follows. Some people have wondered whether the Earth beneath the Rift Valley is shifting. Others have pointed toward changes in rainfall. Still others have blamed human activity.

The interesting thing is that scientists are still investigating the full picture. Increased rainfall has been identified as a major driver of the recent expansion, but geological processes, groundwater movement and other factors may also contribute in different locations. In fact, Kenyan geologists began fresh assessments in 2026 to investigate whether geological changes beneath the Rift Valley might be contributing alongside rainfall and groundwater recharge.

That is an important lesson about science. We sometimes imagine that scientists have an answer for everything. They don’t. A good scientist can look at something enormous and complicated and say: “We know some of what is happening. We need more evidence to understand the rest.” That is not weakness. That is science working properly.

And the rising lakes offer another lesson. A landscape can look permanent when you are standing in it. The hill appears to have always been there. The lake appears to have always occupied that valley. The shoreline looks like a boundary. But nature does not recognise our boundaries. The water keeps moving. The climate changes. Rivers bring sediment. Groundwater moves underground. The Earth’s crust shifts. And slowly, sometimes almost invisibly, the map changes.

The Earth Has Been Talking All Along

There is a temptation when writing about mysterious places to make everything sound supernatural. A red lake becomes an omen. A hot spring becomes evidence of an underground spirit. A changing lake becomes a warning from the ancestors. And while those stories can be culturally meaningful, there is another way to appreciate them. Listen to the story. Then ask what the landscape is actually doing.

Lake Bogoria’s strange colours can be understood through biology and chemistry. Oloidien’s changing salinity can be connected to hydrology and evaporation. Bogoria’s hot springs and geysers reveal the geothermal energy beneath the Kenya Rift Valley. And the rising lakes demonstrate how climate, water systems and geology can transform landscapes within a human lifetime.

But none of those explanations makes the stories unnecessary. If anything, they give us more reasons to keep them. A scientific explanation tells us how something happens. A community story often tells us how people experienced it. Those are different kinds of knowledge. And Kenya needs both.

Because imagine losing the stories while keeping the rocks. We would still have the landscape. But we would lose part of the memory attached to it. And imagine keeping only the stories while refusing to investigate the science. We might miss important warnings about water quality, climate change, geology and the health of ecosystems.

The better approach is curiosity. Listen to the grandmother who says the lake has behaved strangely for generations. Listen to the scientist who collects a water sample. Listen to the fisherman who knows when the shoreline moves. Listen to the geologist studying the rocks. Then put the pieces together.

Because perhaps the most beautiful mystery of all is not that Kenya has strange places. It is that we are still learning how many stories those places can tell. And somewhere beneath the bubbling springs, changing waters and ancient volcanic landscapes, the country is still writing the next chapter. We just have to be curious enough to read it.

If this reached you, it may reach someone who walks past a lake every day and has never wondered what it’s trying to say. Share it with them.