Water from the Last Place You'd Look

In 2010, a severe drought gripped the Turkana region of northern Kenya. Wells ran dry. Livestock collapsed in the dust. Families walked hours to find muddy puddles barely fit for drinking. International aid workers had all but written the area off as beyond help. Then a team from UNESCO arrived with ground-penetrating radar and made a staggering discovery: beneath the cracked, barren earth lay the Lotikipi Basin Aquifer — an underground reserve holding roughly 250 billion cubic meters of fresh water.…