Qualla: Marsabit https://qualla.com/marsabit en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:29 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/s/b/7/j/marsabit-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Marsabit https://qualla.com/marsabit Marsabit: Introduction https://qualla.com/marsabit/ Photo credit Filiberto Strazzari, CC BY 2.0. Drive north from Isiolo across the gravel plains and the heat does the thinking for you. The Chalbi Desert shimmers, the scrub thins to nothing, and the horizon flattens into a hard bright line. Then a single mountain lifts out of the haze, green where everything else is brown, its summit wrapped in cloud. This is Marsabit, an extinct volcano that catches the clouds the lowlands cannot hold and wrings them into forest. The town sits on its shoulder, a kilometer above the desert floor, an outpost of cool air and tall trees in one of the most remote corners of Kenya.

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Image: Filiberto Strazzari | CC BY 2.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/b/7/j/marsabit-wp/sb7j-marsabit-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Marsabit: A Forest That Floats https://qualla.com/marsabit/ Photo credit Rudyologist, CC BY-SA 4.0. Marsabit is an island, though no water surrounds it. Mount Marsabit rises almost a thousand meters above the surrounding desert, high enough to snag the moisture-laden Turkana Jet, a strong wind that sweeps in from the Indian Ocean. The clouds pile up against the slopes and relea...

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Image: Rudyologist | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/b/7/j/marsabit-wp/sb7j-marsabit-a-forest-that-floats.mp3 0:06 2 full Marsabit: Craters Called Gofs https://qualla.com/marsabit/ Photo credit CIAT, CC BY-SA 2.0. The mountain is pocked with the scars of old eruptions, deep volcanic craters the Borana people call gofs. The most beautiful cradles Lake Paradise, a still sheet of water held inside a caldera whose forested walls rise some 150 meters around it. Elephants and buffalo come down t...

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Image: CIAT | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/b/7/j/marsabit-wp/sb7j-marsabit-craters-called-gofs.mp3 0:06 3 full Marsabit: The Singing Wells https://qualla.com/marsabit/ Photo credit CIAT, CC BY-SA 2.0. Water is the organizing fact of life here, and nowhere is that clearer than at the singing wells just outside town. To reach the water table, herders dig deep shafts and form human chains down into the earth, passing buckets hand to hand toward the surface. As they work, they sin...

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Image: CIAT | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/b/7/j/marsabit-wp/sb7j-marsabit-the-singing-wells.mp3 0:06 4 full Marsabit: Ahmed, the King of Marsabit https://qualla.com/marsabit/ Photo credit Jens Klinzing, CC BY-SA 3.0. For a time, the most famous resident of Marsabit was an elephant. Ahmed carried tusks so enormous they were said to brush the ground, and as poaching surged, Kenyan schoolchildren wrote letters to President Jomo Kenyatta begging him to spare the giant. Kenyatta issued a president...

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Image: Jens Klinzing | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/b/7/j/marsabit-wp/sb7j-marsabit-ahmed-the-king-of-marsabit.mp3 0:06 5 full Marsabit: Crossroads of the North https://qualla.com/marsabit/ Photo credit Lindsey Nicholson, CC BY 2.0. Despite its isolation, Marsabit is no backwater. The town of roughly five thousand serves as the capital of Marsabit County and a vital trading post on the long tarmac road that runs from Nairobi to the Ethiopian border at Moyale. Goods from Ethiopia move south through here, good...

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Image: Lindsey Nicholson | CC BY 2.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/b/7/j/marsabit-wp/sb7j-marsabit-crossroads-of-the-north.mp3 0:06 6 full