BUDALANG’I, Kenya (RNS) — Every Sunday morning, Pastor Pascal Ogutu walks barefoot across the cracked mud of what was once the foundation of his church. He passes submerged gravestones and the sagging roof of the altar, now half-buried in water and overgrown reeds.
“This used to be holy ground,” he said softly, gazing across the shimmering expanse where Lake Victoria has swallowed not only farmland and homes but faith sanctuaries, like his Free Pentecostal Fellowship in Kenya.
In the flood-prone plains of Budalang’i in western Kenya, dozens of churches — some more than 50 years old — have been submerged or structurally weakened due to rising water levels and unpredictable rainfall. Scientists attribute the changes to climate shifts that are intensifying across the Lake Victoria basin, one of Africa’s most populous and ecologically fragile regions.
“The water does not just take land,” said Ogutu, of the Free Pentecostal Fellowship in Kenya, whose tin-roofed sanctuary collapsed last November after months of flooding. “It takes our memory. It takes our worship. It takes the place we felt closest to God.”
Budalang’i, a rural constituency in Busia County near the Uganda border, sits along a natural floodplain where the lake’s waters spill out during seasonal rains. But residents say the floods have become more frequent, intense and destructive. In the past five years, the lake’s water levels have risen by more than 2 meters, or just …