Turkana Guardian

Turkana doesn’t need pity.

Pity arrives easily.
It shows up in sad headlines, donation appeals, and photos taken at the worst moment of someone’s life, then disappears just as quickly when attention shifts elsewhere.

Power does not.

Turkana is constantly framed as helpless, as a place to feel sorry for, rather than a place that has been deliberately under-resourced, politically sidelined, and economically extracted, and that framing is convenient because pity demands charity, not change.

Here is the uncomfortable truth: pity keeps systems intact.

It allows institutions to respond with handouts instead of rights, with short-term relief instead of long-term investment, and with sympathy instead of accountability, while communities remain trapped in cycles of dependence they did not create.

Turkana does not lack strength.
It lacks control.

People here adapt to drought, floods, and conflict with precision and courage, yet decisions about water, land, climate finance, and development are still made far away, by people who will never queue for water or bury livestock lost to failed rains.

When Turkana asks for infrastructure, it is offered empathy.
When it demands inclusion, it receives pilots.
When it calls for justice, it is told to be patient.

That is not support, it is containment.

The real controversy is this: pity has become a substitute for power, and as long as Turkana is treated as a perpetual emergency instead of a political and economic actor, nothing fundamentally changes.

What Turkana needs is agency, control over resources, voice in climate decisions, and investments that outlast news cycles, so communities can plan, build, and thrive without waiting for permission to survive.

Because dignity does not come from being helped.

It comes from being trusted with power.

Demand justice, not sympathy

Young people are adapting to a crisis they didn’t create.

They wake up every morning already calculating risk, whether the walk to fetch water is safe, whether school will open or close again, whether the little hope they are holding onto will survive another failed season of rain, because in Turkana, childhood ends early when survival becomes the curriculum.

Teenagers who should be planning careers are instead learning how to stretch meals, migrate with livestock, hustle for casual work, or support families whose safety nets collapsed long before climate change became a global talking point.

They are resilient, yes, but resilience here is forced, not chosen.

A young boy drops out of school to herd the last animals left.
A girl pauses her education because hunger makes learning impossible.
A youth group turns to sand harvesting, charcoal burning, or risky migration, not out of ambition but necessity.

This is what adaptation looks like when the world delays action, young people sacrificing their futures to manage a crisis they did not design, fund, or benefit from.

They are praised for coping, even as coping replaces dreaming.

Survival mode is not innovation.
Survival mode is not empowerment.
Survival mode is not a future.

Every time climate action is postponed, young people in Turkana pay first, carrying the cost in lost education, broken health, and opportunities that never get a chance to exist.

If this generation is forced to inherit only endurance instead of possibility, then climate failure will not be measured in degrees, it will be measured in stolen futures.

Youth do not need more speeches about resilience.
They need systems that allow them to plan, learn, build, and stay.

Because adapting to collapse should never be the only option a young person has.

Demand climate action that protects futures

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Water Is Not Oil. West Pokot’s Claim to Turkana Oil Revenues is mockery ('Erasi')

By Boniface Korobe

Rivers do not recognize political boundaries. They follow nature’s logic, not county lines. River Suam rises from Mount Elgon, flows through West Pokot where it is dammed at Turkwel, then continues as River Turkwel into Turkana County before emptying into Lake Turkana. This uninterrupted hydrological system has existed long before devolution, counties, or modern resource politics.

Yet today, a troubling argument is emerging: that West Pokot County should receive a share of Turkana’s oil revenues because water from Turkwel Dam is used in petroleum operations in Turkana. This claim is not only weak, it is fundamentally flawed. The Turkwel Hydropower Project, located in West Pokot, generates electricity that feeds the national grid. The project has also delivered direct local benefits to West Pokot communities, including scholarships, irrigation schemes, and other development initiatives. These benefits do not extend to Turkana County, despite the fact that Turkana bears downstream ecological impacts caused by regulated river flows. Even more telling, communities around Mount Elgon, where the river originates, both in Kenya and Uganda, have never received a share of Turkwel Dam revenues. No one has argued that the source of the water automatically earns entitlement to profits generated downstream. Why? Because water is a shared natural resource, not a toll commodity.

Oil, however, is different. Petroleum resources are fixed, location-specific, and legally defined. Kenya’s oil lies beneath Turkana soil. Its exploration and production are governed by constitutional and statutory frameworks that tie resource benefits to where the resource exists and where impacts are felt. The use of water in extraction does not change the ownership, character, or entitlement of that oil. If West Pokot’s argument were accepted, it would set a dangerous precedent. By the same logic, Mount Elgon counties could demand compensation for water used to generate electricity at Turkwel Dam. Downstream communities could demand rent for electricity transmitted across their land. Transit regions could demand a share of every national project that merely passes through their territory. This is a slippery slope that would paralyze development and weaponize geography.

Devolution was never meant to encourage opportunistic claims or selective interpretations of equity. It was designed to promote fairness, shared national growth, and respect for clearly defined resource governance principles. You cannot claim benefits while ignoring precedent. You cannot invoke water rights only when oil money is on the table.

Water flowing from Mount Elgon belongs to no single county, it serves all communities along its course. Oil in Turkana, on the other hand, belongs to Turkana by location, by law, and by impact. Conflating these two realities is intellectually dishonest and politically reckless.

Kenya must resist narratives that undermine coherence in resource governance. Equity demands consistency. And consistency makes one thing clear: West Pokot has no legal, moral, or logical claim to Turkana’s oil revenues.

Boniface Korobe
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