‘It feels like death is certain’: lives and limbs lost to crocodile attacks on the banks of Kenya’s rising Lake Turkana

Ng’ikalei Loito outside her home. Photograph: Esther Sweeney/The Guardian

Ng’ikalei Loito was walking out of the warm waters of Lake Turkana on a sunny afternoon, having just finished swimming with her two sisters-in-law, when she suddenly felt the crushing force of a crocodile’s bite on her legs.

In excruciating pain, she instinctively clung to a partially submerged tree that was within reach and screamed for help, as the crocodile tried to drag her under the water.