While the
dry season seems to have come early this year for Ganyliel, we currently find
ourselves surrounded by floods and Ganyliel
has become somewhat of an island.
Last week
some of the guys on the team told me that the road had been cut by the
water. So when we went down to look at
it, sure enough the road had been literally cut by extremely high waters in the
swamp just south of the road. And the
current was strong. This cut in the road
sits about 3-5 km from our compound and there were at least four other weak
points in the road between here and there.
When I asked the guys where this water was coming from, they told me the
Nile.
The Nile
River is not far from us here in Ganyliel… maybe a 3-4 hour journey by
foot. However, Tayar (pronounced “tire”)
is our closest port that sits on Lake Jor.
Lake Jor is the lake that sits between Ganyliel and the Nile but is fed
by the Nile. As best as we can tell, floods
going on south of us on in other parts of the country are flowing into the Nile,
these increased waters feed into Lake Jor causing it to spill outside its banks,
and now we are seeing and feeling the effects of all of this. Ironically, we haven’t seen rain here in well
over a month.
Now our biggest concerns are supplies, food, and displacement by the local community. Most of our market supplies and food come from Tayar during the rainy season, as we have no access to roads. The short and quick agriculture season here
is over and now everyone depends on supplies coming from the port.
However, the water level to Tayar is hitting
porters at neck level in spots along the road, so many of them have started
refusing to make the 6-hr round-trip until traders in the market increase their
prices. In the meantime, traders are
running low and completely out of goods.
A perfect example is rice… 1 kilo/2.2 lbs of rice costs 40 SSP/ $12-13. On top of running out of goods in the market,
we have a growing displacement by the surrounding community.
The airstrip
that sits right outside of our front door here at our compound runs about
1-1.5km in length. At the end of the
airstrip is the one road we have access to and across the road are numerous
other villages. On Friday, a colleague and I
went to check on the some of the villages and their tukuls (mud
huts) that are partially under water.
When we stopped
and spoke with a woman on the walking path, she told us that this village was not
as affected as some of the other villages further south. We met another woman that is from a village
that sits just north of Ganyliel and she said their tukuls were completely
under water; that you could see the tops
of the tukuls, but that was it. When we
asked where she and her children were staying, she said they were staying under
some trees not far from their village, but that her husband was away at the
border (in the military), that they had been looking for food and could find
very little.
When you don’t have money,
you don’t go to the market here--- you go elsewhere, maybe a friend, relative,
or try to use some sort of trade. The
market is for people who work in money. At
this point we have heard and believe that there are 20+ villages under water or
severely affected by these floods.
Today we went to check on nearby villages hit by the floods and noticed that the waterline in some places had started to recede. Thursday we had worked worked with the community at damning the big hole
in the road, but as we checked today… there is another hole. Just as big as the initial hole and the
current is just as strong.
With
displacement like this where people might be able to stay with other family
members or friends, most of them have to sleep under the open sky. But being surrounded by floods and swamp land
in every direction we have seen another big increase this week… increased rates
of malaria in the area. Five of the guys
on my team have it right now (as do I... again).
Just as we thought we might see more receding waters, it appears the opposite is happening. But when the source is the Nile, how do you stop it?
Pics to follow soon.
