The sun rises over what used to be Moses Keben’s maize farm. Instead of golden stalks swaying in the morning breeze, there is only dark, relentless water stretching across his three-acre farm like an inland sea. He should have been preparing to harvest soon. Now, the few golden stalks poking through the water are the only indication that this flooded field is farmland.

“The lake used to be so far away.”

Standing knee-deep in what was once his most productive field, the farmer from Baringo County stares at the submerged remains of his livelihood, his weathered eyes remain emotionless.

“Five years ago, it was worse than this. That was the first time my farm flooded,” Kiptoo says, his voice barely audible above the gentle lapping of waves against what used to be his fence posts. “We rebuilt, we replanted, we hoped. Now the water has come back, and I have once again lost everything.”

This is the story playing out across Baringo County in 2025—a tragic sequel to the devastating “rising lakes” phenomenon that first captured national attention five years ago. Flooding around Lake Baringo has been a recurring challenge in recent years, with swelling waters frequently submerging roads, schools and farmlands. Experts have attributed the phenomenon to climate change, siltation, and geological shifts in the Rift Valley region.

For Keben and hundreds of other smallholder farmers in Baringo, the rising lakes are more than just a natural disaster—they are an existential threat to a way of life that has sustained families for generations. His three-acre plot, which once yielded enough maize and tomatoes to feed his family of eight and generate income for school fees, is now completely underwater.

“In a few weeks, we would have been harvesting. Now, there is nothing but water and the smell of rotting crops,” he says.

The economic devastation extends far beyond Keben’s farm. Other farmers around him on the shores of Lake Baringo are watching as their fields slowly sink beneath the rising waterline. The remains of the sticks that held the tomato plants together jut out of the water like the ribs of some prehistoric beast, a monument to agricultural ambition now claimed by the lake’s insatiable appetite.

“I invested everything in this farm,” a tomato farmer says, his voice thick with emotion. “It was supposed to be my children’s future. Now, I don’t even know how we’ll eat next month.”

The tomato farmer’s plight is particularly acute because his crop requires significant upfront investment—seeds, fertilisers, pesticides, and infrastructure itself. Unlike subsistence farmers who might lose a season’s food supply, commercial farmers like him face the complete destruction of their capital investments.

As devastating as the agricultural losses are, perhaps nowhere is the human cost of the rising lakes more poignant than in the flooded schools that dot the landscape like abandoned islands.

Nosukuro Primary School, which served over 200 pupils, now sits empty, its classrooms transformed into aquatic chambers where desks are abandoned and textbooks have become waterlogged pulp. Crocodiles stalk it’s walls like prey.

“There are at least five schools that have been submerged and the most affected are the children from the islands,” William Lemkut, a Village Elder at Kokwa Island, explains.  “While schools across the country reopened for the third term, Nosukoro did not since the classrooms were already flooded. Salabani Primary is also underwater, Salabani Secondary School, Ng’ambo Primary and Ng’ambo Secondary. All of those are affected so in total, we are talking about more than 1,000 children who cannot go to school.”

Five years ago when the lake swelled, Nosukuro was spared. But not this time.

“The water moved one kilometre to flood the school,”  William explains. “The boat we are on right now is floating above what used to be the parade ground,” he continues.

But it is not just farmers who are losing. On Kokwa Island, fishing has long been a lifeline. For Judy Theweri, a mother of five, it is the only way to feed her family. Yet the fish are vanishing.

“We are experiencing a shortage,” she laments. “Where we used to fish, we cannot go anymore. We wake up at 3 a.m. to try, but even then, the catch is poor. And when we get fish, we have to pay for speedboats to reach the market, only to sell one piece for Sh10.”

Others share her despair. “The fish are fewer, the crocodiles are more,” says one fisherman who supplements his income by digging latrines. “Every day is a gamble.”

On the other side of the lake, the Marigat-Loruk road, a crucial artery that connects Baringo County to the rest of Kenya, has been closed due to rising Lake Baringo floodwaters, effectively cutting off entire communities from markets, healthcare, and emergency services. Locals now have to wade through the crocodile and hippo-infested waters to get to the other side.

Children, too, are forced to make this daredevil journey at least twice a day to get to school or return home.“I am an ECDE teacher at Loruk Primary School,” Rhoda Ruto says. “I am supposed to have 60 children in my class, but only 20 have reported to school. The others are unable to come due to the flooding,” she says.

The rainfall patterns that feed the Rift Valley lakes have become increasingly erratic and intense, a signature of climate change that scientists have long predicted for East Africa. Because the forecast for rainfall in the Rift Valley basin is a rising trend, the lake levels look set to rise even more in the future. Climate models suggest that the Rift Valley could experience even more extreme rainfall events in the coming decades, potentially making the current flooding look modest by comparison.

As 2025 progresses and the waters show no signs of receding, the people of Baringo County face a fundamental question: Is this the new normal? Scientists suggest that the rising water volume of most Rift Valley Lakes in Kenya has led to significant economic, social and environmental challenges, with widespread flooding causing displacement of populations, destruction of infrastructure and continued losses to the tourism sector.

For farmer Keben, standing in his flooded field as the sun sets over what has become an unintentional lake, the question is more immediate. “I’m old,” he says. “I don’t have time to wait for the water to go down. I need to plant next season, or my family will go hungry. But where do I plant when there is only water?”