The most convincing explanation is that when someone is finding it difficult to understand what is said to them, he/she engages in a form of lip-reading: he/she will observe the lips of the talker and mimic the talker's lip movements.
Lake Tanganyika is an African Great Lake. It is estimated to be the second largest freshwater lake in the world by volume, and the second deepest, in both cases, after only Lake Baikal in Siberia; it is also the world's longest freshwater lake.
The lake, formerly known as Lake Rudolf, is a lake in the Great Rift Valley in Kenya, with its far northern end crossing into Ethiopia. It is the world's largest permanent desert lake and the world's largest alkaline lake.