When he was a child, James Owuor loved hearing the elders talk about the way life used to be. So it comes as something of a surprise that at 38, he is now the one tasked with the job of describing the Before Times in Kenya’s Rift Valley. Before Lake Baringo started to rise, before it flooded and stole everything he knew. “At the beginning, we just thought it was a bad rainy season, that the water would recede when the dry season came.