Walking for water: Six-day camel caravan saving Kenya's lifeline

The sun had barely risen when we set off, camels swaying gently under the weight of water containers and our modest belongings. Ahead of us stretched six days of dust, song, and prayer — a caravan that was not just about movement, but about memory, hope, and survival.

I joined the Camel Caravan not once, but twice, drawn to it like a river calling its people back to its banks. When I first took part, I thought it would be just another environmental march - banners, slogans, and speeches under the sun. What I found instead was a six-day pilgrimage, a test of spirit, and a living story of how water binds us together.

We walked - hundreds of us: community elders, young people, activists, conservationists, camels groaning under the weight of banners and tents, and musicians carrying drums.

The journey wound its way along the banks of the Ewaso Nyiro River, the lifeline of eastern and northern Kenya. Without it, people, livestock, and wildlife cannot survive. With it, life thrives - albeit barely, now that climate change and human pressure are choking it dry.

This annual journey, now in its 13th year, seeks to save the Ewaso Nyiro River - the fragile artery of northern Kenya. For communities, wildlife, and livestock, the river is everything. For me, it became a mirror, reflecting both the resilience of the land and the fragility of our relationship with water.

The call of a river

The Ewaso Nyiro snakes across semi-arid landscapes, feeding pastoralist communities, elephants, giraffes, and countless other species. But over the years, alarm has grown as the river has thinned, interrupted by human activity, deforestation, and the unrelenting hand of climate change.

When I first heard about the caravan, it struck me as both poetic and urgent -communities walking with camels, the very ships of the desert, to speak for a river that has no voice. What better way to remind humanity that water is not just a resource, but a right, a rhythm, and a story woven into our lives?

The caravan is not an easy walk. The sun beats down with relentless intensity, dust clings to your skin, and your legs ache with every step. Yet every moment is softened by the power of togetherness.

Women ululate as the caravan enters villages, children run barefoot alongside the camels, and elders share stories under acacia trees.

I remember sitting beneath an acacia as the setting sun painted the vast grasslands golden brown on the third day. It was a storytelling session. My creative mind was alert as I listened to an elder from the Borana community. His voice was rough, carrying the weight of years.

“When the river dies, we die,” he said. It was not a metaphor - it was truth. “The river is our mother. When she is sick, the children suffer.”

Around him, young boys with herds of goats listened quietly, their eyes fixed on the ground. These were the true inheritors of the water crisis.

The Camel Caravan is a space of both lament and hope. We mourn together for what has been lost - dried springs, dead livestock, children buried too young from waterborne diseases. But we also celebrate the resilience of communities who refuse to give up.

Every evening, as the sun dipped below the horizon, we gathered in circles to sing, dance, debate, and remember that water is not just a resource - it is a covenant between generations.

Along the route, we met women drawing from shrinking wells, scooping muddy water into yellow jerricans. One woman told me she now spends six hours a day searching for water - time that could have gone into farming or caring for her children. Her hands were cracked, her face tired, but her determination was unbroken.

We carried placards, sang songs of conservation, and at night slept under starlit skies that reminded us how small we are against the vastness of the universe. Yet with each dawn, I felt a growing conviction: to walk with water is to walk with life itself.

The caravan is more than a protest or awareness march — it is a classroom. I learned from women who, every morning, walk kilometers to fetch water, balancing heavy jerricans with grace. I listened to pastoralists who explained how shifting seasons have pushed them into conflicts with neighbors. And I witnessed young people with eyes full of determination, demanding that leaders protect their inheritance.

In those six days, I discovered something profound: the river does not divide us — it unites us. It carries our stories, quenches our thirst, and reminds us that we belong not just to the land, but to each other.

On the final day, as we reached the river’s banks, I was in a contemplative state. Not because I was tired, but because I understood, with startling clarity, the fragility of this lifeline. Standing there, feet in the shallow water, I realised we cannot afford indifference.

The Camel Caravan is not just about walking. It is about witnessing, remembering, and pledging. It is about saying: We will not let this river die.

When we talk about climate change, it often feels distant - measured in degrees or carbon charts. But on the caravan, it is raw and real. It is the sight of a dry riverbed where children once played. It is the silence of a thirsty cow that could not survive. It is the grief of a mother whose child falls sick from dirty water.

And yet, it is also the resilience of a people who refuse to give up - who will walk for six days, barefoot and blistered, so their river might live.

For me, the caravan was a pilgrimage - not to a shrine, but to a river. A reminder that water, so ordinary, is in fact sacred. Walking those six days over two years was not just about advocacy; it was about rediscovering humility.

Every step taught me that water is sacred. It holds memories - of childhood swims, of harvests, of droughts that scarred the land. It has survival, quenching both animals and people. And it holds a story - the story of communities who walk with water as a friend, not a foe.

As we reached our final destination, exhausted and blistered, I looked at the river glinting in the sun. It looked fragile, almost shy, as though hiding from our gaze. But it was still flowing. Still alive.

The caravan had not saved it - that work is bigger, longer, and harder. But it had reminded me, and everyone else, why it must be saved.

When I think back now, what remains is not the heat or the blisters. It is the voices, the songs, the determination etched into the faces of people walking for their river. It is a reminder that water is life. In northern Kenya, it is also memory, struggle, and survival.

I carry those days with me still - the songs, the dust, the laughter, the tears. Whenever I open a tap in my home in Ngong, I think of the Ewaso Nyiro. I think of the children running alongside camels, the women balancing jerricans, the elders speaking wisdom.

And I know this: to walk with water is to walk with hope. The Camel Caravan is not just their story - it is mine. It is ours.

Because sometimes, to understand the soul of a place, you must walk its river.