6 min readImage of the Day for June 23, 2026Relentless rains are threatening a lake in Kenya's Great Rift Valley that has become a key hub in the global flower trade.
NASA Earth ObservatoryJun 23, 2026 Article
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Kenya's Lake Naivasha has long been a place of change and reinvention.
In precolonial times, the nomadic Maasai people used the lake and surrounding grasslands to water and raise cattle during the dry season. The Maasai were eventually displaced by British colonists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including a group of free-thinking aristocrats who arrived in large numbers in the 1920s through 1940s. Known as the Happy Valley set, these newcomers cultivated lavish estates and were notorious for reveling in a culture of excess. Their influence faded in the 1950s and 1960s amid scandal and the overthrow of colonial rule, allowing the area to transform into a center of wildlife tourism, flower farming, and geothermal energy production.
