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So far, we’d managed to find some answers to who and how, but the big question of why remained. Over drinks, Eric leans forward and taps the table with his index finger.

“This is all because of Kenyatta. He started this, and he knew he was playing with fire, but he did it anyway.”

This is the first time I have ever heard a Kenyan disparage Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya’s first president and something of a secular saint in the nation’s collective mythology. But Eric is right. Kenyatta played fast and loose with ethnic rivalries by making sure his own Kikuyu people got first dibs on everything. One of the problems is, the system is set in stone, and now Kenya has 20 million more people than in Kenyatta’s time, and living standards have fallen below those seen in colonial times. In short, more people are fighting over less. And what's left is disappearing fast.

With the combi working, such as it is, we head south to Lake Naivasha. Unlike most of the Rift Valley lakes which are alkaline, Naivasha is a vast reservoir of drinking and irrigation water, but it is drying up. Exactly how fast surprises even Charles, a friend of Kefa’s whom we met up with. He takes us to a Kenya Wildlife Services park on the lake shores and guides us around the dense fever tree forest along the old water’s edge because Cape buffalo lurk in the shadows. Beyond this, we find a massive mud flat extending four hundred yards out before it meets the water.

“This all happened in just the last three months,” Charles says of the receding water. He has a birdlike face and thin arms. As he stands looking at the distant water, I almost expect him to bob his head back and forth. “This is not good, not good at all. No.” As we walk to the distant water, we tromp over brown, dried out bulbs and vines, the remains of great floating islands of water hyacinth that were stranded by the receding water.

Only small water channels remain of the old shoreline of Lake Naivasha. If the lake goes, millions go thirsty.

You can’t blame any one factor for Lake Naivasha’s demise. Instead, it’s a combination of overuse, environmental damage and, probably, climate change. As for water consumption, you don’t have to look farther than the dozens and dozens of two- and three- acre greenhouses along Naivasha’s shores. At some point, Naivasha's big operation farmers, largely foreigners, looked for a crop that loved a high elevation, nearly year round sunshine, and could tolerate cool nights. They stumbled on roses. The success of the Kenya rose business has been so phenomenal that virtually every cut rose sold in Europe now has an African pedigree. Every morning, you can see the big refrigerator trucks barreling down the Rift Valley highway heading for Jomo Kenyatta Airport where they are flown to the flower auction houses in Rotterdam.

One Naivasha's greenhouses

 But success has come with a cost that is clear when you walk along the endless rows of rose bushes in the stifling greenhouses. Each bush, which is planted in shredded coconut husks, has a small hose that constantly drips a combination of water, acid, fertilizer, pesticide and herbicides. If the bushes develop mites, the farmers fumigate the whole greenhouse. It doesn’t take a genius to know that these chemicals wind up somewhere. The safest bet is the water table and then the lake.

Ossarian farms pumping station, one of the reasons the lake is dying.

 Farming on an industrial level is demanding, and the opportunity for cutting corners in terms of safety and pollution are obvious. Rose farmers insist they run good operations. Some probably do. But my German friend told me that when she pointed out to one farmer that he was dumping chemicals directly into a stream that flowed into the lake, he responded, "Yeah, and I don't give a damn." Studies have shown that the levels of chemical residues linked to the farms such as herbicides, pesticides and nitrogen are rising in the lakes waters and in its fish, a major source of food.

A fisherman wades out to set his nets. Rising levels of chemicals are making their way up the food chain through the fish. Studies have shown that high levels of nitrates, a common part of fertilizer, in drinking water can stunt the mental development in children. 

About a hundred yards away are the hippos.

Despite the penchant for secrecy among some of the farmers, we decide the best thing to do is to tackle one of the biggest operations on the lake. That would be the Ossarian farms which employ 5,000 people. After much driving about, winding up locked out of a sumptious guesthouse in the heat, we manage to blunder into the farm's headquarters after we babble our way past security.

Inside a cool buildings of quarried stone with well dressed secretaries scurrying about, I tell one that I would like to talk to the general manager. The secretary isn't sure what to make of me. I might be a flower buyer from Europe, but all the ones she has seen don't dress in dirty olive green shorts and hiking boots. To be safe, she informs me the general manager is very busy. I tell her I will wait. She doesn't like this down to the tips of her pink painted fingernails, particularly because Eric, Kefa, Charles, and Peter are waiting with me. We are taking up a lot of room around her desk, and the five of us are probably consuming most of the available oxygen.

After a stand off, she says she will fetch the general manager, but she's no longer maintaining the Kenyan tradition of politeness. The manager comes out, looking puzzled. For one thing, the security guys at the gate should have never let us. He's also not really sure about me. I'm not a tourist, that much is clear. But what the hell am I doing in his headquarters? And that's his first question.

“I’m doing some research for a book based in part on the flower farms in Kenya and was wondering if I might take a tour of some of the farms you operate,” I ask.

Without pausing, he barks in a Zimbabwe accent, "There is no way you will ever set foot on our property.” He says the words “no way” so emphatically you want to write them in capitals and underline them. There's a bit of awkwardness. The man coughs and goes on for a bit in an apologetic tone with a few "you understands" thrown in and  a couple "just can't risk its" also. He blames the need to maintain “trade secrets.”

Ossarian’s home on the shores of Lake Naivasha.

 Maybe it’s the man’s blushing cheeks or maybe it’s his hemming and hawing, but I'm getting the idea he's a bad liar. Or maybe he isn't. Trade secrets can cover a lot of ground, including unsafe working practices and intentional releases of pollutants. Wouldn't want to risk that getting out. In a country where over half the people don’t have formal jobs, it would take a reckless worker to challenge his boss. Add to this a growing concern about the levels of serious illness on the farms. Maybe it’s just me, but there seems to be a lot you might actually feel apologetic over.

One embarrassing point is that while globalization has lifted up the flower farming industry, it's left the workers in the dust earning a pittance. On the one farm we eventually manage to talk our way onto, the workers lived in wood shacks on the grounds, pretty much in the same way their grandfathers did during colonial days when the huts were called “labor lines.” The only thing that has changed for them is the politics, and the need for their political party to win to help lift them out of their poverty trap.

Where Ossarian’s workers live.

                                                                             ***

 But back to vanishing Lake Naivasha. While the spreading farms suck more and more water from the lake, less water flows in, and you can see one of the reasons if you stand on the shores of Lake Naivasha at night.

Up on the dark outline of the Mau escarpment, the Rift's western wall, small bright pin pricks of red glow where the forest fires burn, and the pin pricks stretch as far north and south as the eye can see. In the past, the Mau Forest acted as a sponge absorbing the heavy downpours during the rainy season and then releasing the water slowly into rivers that replenished Naivasha in the dry season. The importance of this cycle was so clear, colonial administrators decreed the Mau forest to be protected from all intrusion, a haven for elephant and buffalo.

But starting in the late 1980s, under the pressures of population growth, land hunger and political expediency, former President Daniel Arap Moi found it useful to reward his supporters by doling out parcels of forest land. It is one reason he stayed in power over 20 years. The squatters swarmed in and cleared the forest for their farms. Then they kept on clearing it for firewood, to widen their fields, and to sell the lumber. What was once unbroken swathe of trees is now a checker board of bare land and tiny farms.

If cutting the trees might result in even more poverty in the Rift Valley, there's no doubt it was worth it to Moi and his family. His son Philip controls a fortune reported to be worth about $550 million. But, of course, Philip must have been a bit slow because his brother Gideon has managed to get his sticky fingers on a total  $790 million. The old man's worth is literally off the charts. Kenyans who have tried to find out tend to wind up as car accident victims or get gunned down in "armed robberies." All I know for sure is we drove past one of Daniel Arap Moi's many farms and it measured seven kilometers by 11 kilometers. All this in a country where most people farm one or two acres, and the average annual wage is $480.

When politicians talk about corruption, they use the euphemism "It is our turn to eat." But even by Kenyan standards, Moi and his boys have held a gargutuan feast on the public coffers.

We decide to look into all this and the forest fires first hand by heading up the escarpment. Afte a few miles, we leave 21^st century farming behind and entering an area where people still do slash and burn in much the same way they did in the 11^th century. Once inside the forest,  the damage is everywhere. Extending back from the road for two hundred yards on either side are the fresh stumps where the large trees have been logged. Only small trees, about as big around as my calf, are left. We even pass three Kenyans armed with a chain saw who are slicing up a cedar into rough boards. The stump is at least four-feet across, the remains of a giant.

We stop by a clear cut, a jumble of wasted boughs blackened by fire. A local man sits on the side of the road, and when we ask him about the fire, he says he and others from his village set it just a week ago.Before, the buffalo were on the road at night, and the villages were afraid to walk. Now, with the new growth burned off, the buffalo have left. Sometimes it doesn't take a conspiracy, just some poorly thought out actions to bring a whole house of cards tumbling down. 

The ghost of the Mau Forest.

The partial repair of the combi is holding up so we feel confident about heading upwards again and begin to cross a series of river beds. But these river beds are completely dry and choked with grass when they ought to be flowing year round. It is proof the forest can no longer hold the water that falls during the short and long rains any longer. All along the Rift Valley's western escarpment, it's the same story. A decade ago, Lake Nakuru had 42 sources of water flowing into it. Now, it has two.

Lake Nakuru’s Flamingos.

And if it dries up, the flamingos which draw tourists from worldwide, will vanish. In Kenya, where one dollar out of  every four is based on tourism, this is a big deal.

Kenyans also blame global warming for their water woes, and everyone I talked to is convinced the rains are coming later in the season and last for a shorter period of time. This may be true, but it is also true that Kenya’s rains have always been a hit or miss affair. So far, hard evidence that there is a sustained shift in weather patterns seems skimpy, but that doesn’t offer much comfort when a lake is drying out and then a drought hits.