“We’re still losing altitude.” Kendai Bahouti shouted, wrestling for control of the twin engine aircraft. Large beads of sweat coalesced on his brow, ran down his nose and dripped in expanding dark discs on his tan shirt.

The anthropology team was en route from Nairobi to the new Turkana Basin Institute in the Rift Valley province of Kenya. Their flight took them over small fumaroles and steam vents from forest covered calderas.

But during the low level traverse of Lake Turkana, a wall of flamingos lofted into the air, their heavy pink bodies slammed into the plane, spidered the windshield and bent the four left propeller blades so that they looked like a wilted blood stained flower.

“Toss out anything you can.”, Kendai ordered. Then began a drizzle of equipment, luggage, and computers drooled over several miles of coffee, wheat, barley, and bean fields.

Slowly Kendai, his broad back stained in a shawl of sweat, leveled the aircraft. Now would come the even more difficult task of landing.

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