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Africa’s Great Rift Valley is a 6,000
mile crack in the earth’s crust, stretching from Lebanon to Mozambique. One of its most
dramatic sections slices through east Africa dividing Kenya into 2 segments. Geologists
know that Rift Valley was formed by violent subterranean forces that tore apart the
earth’s crust. These factors caused huge chunks of the crust to sink between parallel
fault lines forcing up molten rock in volcanic eruptions. Kenya’s Rift Valley has a
geographic feature called bambos. These are shallow depressions located often near rivers
filled with water during the rainy season. A dambo can be a kilometer in length and
several hundreds of meters in width. Due to the frequent presence of water, tall papyrus
and several other grasses grow around their edges. These dambos are breeding grounds for
mosquitoes, even in the dry season as they remain greener than other areas. |