Jimmy Lee Wilson, age 11, of Newton, Iowa, for his question: 

What is the Great Rift Valley of Kenya?

This long trough is part of the geography of eastern Africa. Geologists call the Great Rift Valley of Kenya a fault in the earth's crust. The fault runs from the Red Sea southward all the way to Mozambique on Africa's southeastern shoreline. Actually, it is an immense crack in the earth's crust that occurred ages ago. The eastern edge of the crack sank down and sagged away from the western edge, forming the immense valley. Through the ages, long stretches of the trough have filled with valley soils. Other stretches have filled with lake water.

The eastern lakes on a map of Africa reveal the general direction of the Great Rift. They are a series of long, slim lakes, beginning with Lake Rudolf south of the Red Sea. From there you can draw a line straight sough through Lakes Magadi and Natron and on to Lake Nyasa to get the main line of the rift. But if you look northwest from Lake Nyasa you will see Lakes Tanganyika and Albert making a great curving, arm, and this too is a branch of the Great Rift. Many earth scientists suspect that similar rifts occurred to make the continents separate and drift apart. This immense crack may someday widen and separate Africa from Asia.