Ben Wilhelmi: aerial pictures of lake Natron

ever beautiful lake Natron, anytime of the year, though some seasons are better than others.

western shoreline, called here Oldoinyo Sambu. Imagine some people live at the foot of this cliff. If they can’t afford to wait for the bimonthly Flying Medical Service mobile clinics, they have to climb up the cliff to get to Wasso hospital and still face about a day of hard terrain walk…Imagine a mother with a sick kid or an elder…

the doctors on board treated 84 patients in 3 days, the nurses gave vaccinations to more than 100 kids and pregnant women. A drop in the ocean of the 35 million Tanzanians, most of them living far from any medical facility.

anyway back to the beauty of that artful lake.

the lake is very shallow and that explains why any variation of water level due to evaporation can dramatically change its pattern from one day to the next. Below is a dry area coming just next to the wet one.

and some rare animals enjoy that dryness to walk on the crust, with some risks as it can be fragile. I did once walk on some crust when I noticed that the wildebeest footprints (un gnou) suddenly stopped as if the thing had taken off or most likely sunk in. Also remembering that a scientist had spent 2 weeks in hospital to treat his burns after falling through, I carefully went back. It’s like walking on egg shells and I could hear the crack noise going away from my feet. There is also an aircraft at the bottom of the lake: the pilot landed for a lunch with his onboard friends and they never managed to prevent the sinking of the aircraft…

this is Shombole, an extinct volcano on the Kenyan border, northern part of the lake. Border that Maasai people don’t give a crap about of course. They think more global than that. We’re here going from Njurlan, located on the left side of Shombole, to Olorbelin on the right side. Less than 10 minutes of flight.