![]() Lake Natron is the most important flamingo breeding place on earth. The lake is home of more than a million of flamingoes, more particularly the pinkish white plumage Lesser Flamingoes : indeed it provides food and breeding place for these birds which are outright suited to the hard environment of a volcanic lake. It is a large soda lake (water full of sodium carbonate) that seems hostile to any living creature, except for an endemic species of fish, the alkaline tilapia, and also for the Spirulina a blue-green algae with red pigments, micro-organism the flamingoes feed on. Located at 610 m on the Great Rift Valley Escarpment in Northern Tanzania, Lake Natron is adjacent to the extinct Gelai Volcano and near the active Oldoinyo Lengaï. The modern world has now an influence on the traditional society by new emerging forms of employment including farming, business such as running shops, restaurants, campsites, tourist guides, selling art and crafts –beadwork and jewellery, small wooden stools, knives and traditional clothing-, etc.Īll the same, Maasai people are determined to keep their independance and the attachment to their traditions, their culture. It is the women’s responsability to build houses and to keep family and home, while men are in charge of boma and family security and boys of herding livestock. The Maasai Boma is the village surrounded by a fence made of acacia thorns to prevent wildlife from attacking cattle. They live in circular houses –Inkajijik- (in Maasai language), made of boughs cemented with mud, cow dung, and loaf-shaped. They speak Maa language, an east nilotic language and are also educated in swahili and english. The cattle is the primary source of income for the Maasai. ![]() Livestock such as cattle, sheep, goats are central to the livelihood of the Maasai people and represents their main wealth. They have resisted in being imposed a more sedentary way of life. On their migratory way South, they have been regarded for their strength and their high warrior performances. The Maasai are pastoralists and semi-nomadic people. Maasai people have nilotic origin, and they migrated South in the fifteenth century, from the Nile Valley in Egypt and Soudan to reach in the seventeenth century Southern Kenya and Northern Tanzania where they live now. In the process of splitting the African plate in two new separate plates, the Great Rift Valley in East Africa has been a great source of discoveries in human evolution : particularly evident at the site of Olduvai Gorge East of the Serengeti Plains and Laetoli, with the discoveries by the archeologists Leakey of some of the earliest remains of fossil hominids in 1959 and later. It is a huge fault formed in the earth’s crust and dotted with both active and extinct volcanoes. It is a geological feature stretching from Syria inthe north andspreading southward in EastAfrica from Ethiopia, through Kenya and Tanzania to Mozambique. Other animals which inhabit this area are zebra, ostrich, fringed eared oryx, gazelle, gerenuk, lesser kudu and golden jackal.Lake Natron area is a dry and above all an hauntingly beautiful area ! Be sure to plan some days in this magnificent zone and your stay will be an outstanding experience. Because the flamingos use this area for breeding the lake and its surrounding is under the International concern for preservation. The flamingos of lake Natron feed with the lakes Spirulina algae. They build their nests using the soda flats between August and October. The lake is a breeding place for thousands of Rift Valley Flamingos. Some of the activities at Lake Natron are swimming, a visit to Maasai boma or a simple trek to the Ngorongoro Crater Highlands with numerous craters. Among the most prominent attractions of Lake Natron is the Gelai Volcano, a 2,942 m (9,652 feet) high volcano in the southeastern part, and the archeological site of Peninj, where archeologists discovered the Peninj Mandible – the fossilized teeth of Australopithecus boisei. The area around the lake offers different attractions such as a large number of volcanic implosion craters, numerous waterfalls and ravines with nesting places for Rüppell's Griffon Vultures. The surface of Lake Natron, which has high salt, magnesite and sodium carbonate concentration, is covered with a pinkish-white soda crust. The shallow and alkaline lake has different springs, the Ewaso Ng'iro River and different hot springs. Lake Natron covers an area 56 km (35 miles) long and 24 km (15 miles) wide but the water level changes due to evaporation. The lake is in the vicinity of Ol Doinyo Lengai, which is visible on the southern part. Lake Natron is situated in northern Tanzania on the border with Kenya, close to the Serengeti National Park and the Ngorongoro Conservation Area.
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