Over the past 4-5 years, the former frontier district of Turkana County (Kenya) has been thrown into the international spotlight by an array of large-scale humanitarian and development activities, including an EU-funded refugee settlement at Kalobeyei, the GIBE III megadam upstream of Lake Turkana, and a burgeoning oil industry in the south. Whereas these projects have been implemented and discussed by researchers largely as independent interventions, this paper provides a comparative perspective on the perceptions and responses of 'affected communities'. Case studies discuss 1) the establishment of a 'hybridized community' of locals and refugees through the Kalobeyei Integrated Settlement, and 2) the impact of upstream hydro-electric and irrigation activities on Lake Turkana's fishing communities. These case studies demonstrate how large-scale interventions often differ from the picture painted by the media. Nonetheless, communities attempting to make sense of their predicaments often incorporate elements of international discourse in an attempt to reconcile their personal experiences with the narratives and labels applied by agencies, activists, and the media. We conclude that the ways projects are represented publicly can influence or even constrain the responses of affected communities, with consequences for project implementation and stakeholder engagement.