AN EXPLORATION OF THE FUTURE ARCHEOLOGIES OF TURKANA, KENYA: AFTER BINYAVANGA WAINAINA

Dear Binyavanga,

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You are no longer with us, but your cynicism lives on. Your Lokichogio is no longer a site for humanitarian airlifts: The airstrip was abandoned. Only the 748 Air Services Cafe remains - don’t worry, cappuccinos are still served, as well as ice cream, and burgers, but there are no refugees for another forty miles.

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Instead, the twin-engine turboprop Dash-8, with a WFP cornucopia-like logo blazoning on its tail, drops supplies at Kakuma airstrip where a single Turkana boy stands clinging to the wire fence dressed in green checkered shuka, eyeing the disembarking jetlagged humanitarians, unaware that he too will soon become an exhibit in the Nairobi National Museum like the ancestral Turkana Boy.

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For he too will be abandoned once the airlifts cease; once Kakuma Refugee Camp has fulfilled its role in the humanitarian story, a footnote to the SDGs, KISEDP, CRRF, RRPs, and Kenya Vision 2030; once humanitarians return to HQ, reminiscing about their failed Development plan; once Kakuma becomes the next Lokichogio, as desolate as it once was before the first Dash-8 landed in its sands.

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And I cannot help but wonder, from my HQ desk job, what would become of the Land Cruisers and the 4x4 Hilux fleets, of the child-friendly spaces, the women’s shelters, the maternity wards, the outpatient clinics, the dispensaries, and the Angelina Jolie Primary School.

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Would they become as vacant as Lokichogio camp, as ghostly as the INGO offices Kitgum, Uganda? Would they be razed  like the camps at Greece’s Moria, and Ethiopia’s Hitsats, and Shimelba? Or converted into gleaming shopping centers like Israel’s Holot Detention Center?

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Would our descendants forget that Turkana, the cradle of humanity, was once home to bustling markets offering stacks of firewood, goatmeat, hand-carved wooden headrests, rainbow-colored glass-bead necklaces, and an exemplary harmony between guests and hosts?

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