Kargi is a village in

Marsabit County Marsabit County is a county in Kenya. Covering a surface area of 66,923.1 square kilometres. Marsabit is the second largest county in Kenya. Its capital is Marsabit and its largest town Moyale. According to the 2019 census, the county has a pop ...

, located in the north-eastern portion of

Kenya ) , national_anthem = "Ee Mungu Nguvu Yetu"() , image_map = , map_caption = , image_map2 = , capital = Nairobi , coordinates = , largest_city = Nairobi , ...

. Its about from

Marsabit Marsabit is a town in the northern Marsabit County in Kenya. It is situated in the former Eastern Province and is almost surrounded by the Marsabit National Park. The town is located east of the centre of the East African Rift at an elevation o ...

, and about from the country's capital,

Nairobi Nairobi ( ) is the capital and largest city of Kenya. The name is derived from the Maasai phrase ''Enkare Nairobi'', which translates to "place of cool waters", a reference to the Nairobi River which flows through the city. The city proper ha ...

Infrastructure

The town has a

mosque A mosque (; from ar, مَسْجِد, masjid, ; literally "place of ritual prostration"), also called masjid, is a place of prayer for Muslims. Mosques are usually covered buildings, but can be any place where prayers ( sujud) are performed, ...

, a

Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

church Church may refer to: Religion * Church (building), a building for Christian religious activities * Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination * Church service, a formalized period of Christian communal worship * Chris ...

, three primary schools, an all-boys secondary school, and a

dispensary A dispensary is an office in a school, hospital, industrial plant, or other organization that dispenses medications, medical supplies, and in some cases even medical and dental treatment. In a traditional dispensary set-up, a pharmacist dispen ...

. The town also has a water pan to the north. Manyattas, or a group of huts forming a unit within a fence characterise the towns fringes.

Demographics

Kargi is estimated to be made up of 2,064 households, and 26% of its residents can read and write.

Geography

Kargi is located on the Korolle

Oasis In ecology, an oasis (; ) is a fertile area of a desert or semi-desert environment'ksar''with its surrounding feeding source, the palm grove, within a relational and circulatory nomadic system.” The location of oases has been of critical imp ...

inside the

Chalbi Desert The Chalbi Desert is a small desert in northern Kenya near the border with Ethiopia. It is east of Lake Turkana and contains North Horr. Marsabit is the closest major urban center. Etymology In the language of the Gabbra people, Chalbi means ...

. The oasis and town are a stop for the animals of the Rendille, Gabra and Borana to have a drink.

Climate

Kargi has a

Tropical savanna climate Tropical savanna climate or tropical wet and dry climate is a tropical climate sub-type that corresponds to the Köppen climate classification categories ''Aw'' (for a dry winter) and ''As'' (for a dry summer). The driest month has less than of p ...

. The district's yearly temperature is , 4.1% higher than Kenya's average. Kargi typically receives about of precipitation and has 120.09 rainy days, or 32.9% of the time.

History

In 2017, the Kenya Off-Grid Solar Access Project (KOSAP) was launched, which planned to provide energy to 277,000 households (1.3 million people) in remote, low density, and underserved areas of Kenya. It aimed to provide energy to towns like Kargi via

mini-grids A mini-grid is an aggregation of loads and one or more energy sources operating as a single system providing electric power and possibly heat isolated from a main power grid. A modern mini-grid may include renewable and fossil fuel-based generation ...

. In 2020, residents from Kargi sued the state of Kenya over claims of poisonous materials being dumped in the area by international corporations. One of the companies mentioned being Amoco Petroleum, which explored for oil in the 1980s, and after no success, abandoned the project without properly cleaning. It is reported that the dumping of these materials has caused the deaths of 7,000 animals after contaminating water supplies. In 2021, World

Desertification Desertification is a type of land degradation in drylands in which biological productivity is lost due to natural processes or induced by human activities whereby fertile areas become increasingly arid. It is the spread of arid areas caused by ...

and

Drought A drought is defined as drier than normal conditions.Douville, H., K. Raghavan, J. Renwick, R.P. Allan, P.A. Arias, M. Barlow, R. Cerezo-Mota, A. Cherchi, T.Y. Gan, J. Gergis, D. Jiang, A. Khan, W. Pokam Mba, D. Rosenfeld, J. Tierney, an ...

Day was held on 17 June, where some 10,000 trees were planted. Between 2020 and 2023, a

drought A drought is defined as drier than normal conditions.Douville, H., K. Raghavan, J. Renwick, R.P. Allan, P.A. Arias, M. Barlow, R. Cerezo-Mota, A. Cherchi, T.Y. Gan, J. Gergis, D. Jiang, A. Khan, W. Pokam Mba, D. Rosenfeld, J. Tierney, an ...

occurred affecting the region heavily, and causing the deaths of many livestock in the town. On the 1st of March at 2AM, bandits attacked the town of Kargi, stealing about a 1000 sheep and goats and killing 3, two of which were children aged 7 and 8, and the other was a 35 year old herdsman

References

Populated places in Marsabit County {{Kenya-geo-stub