And this brave woman smiles! What a resilience after months of misery.
And the massive road work is being carried on as usual. No visible help is diverted to the people. I hope l missed something on that aspect.
There was a street some time ago...
Some residents are relocating, salvaging what they can.
Another resilient woman, laughing while spreading fish to dry.
The road work going for 100's of km in the area.
A massive highway project is still going on but help to the people? Apparently not.
These guys took a bath further away, away from sewage and potential cholera...
Previous marking of water level.
A rare smile that day...
Nile cabbage everywhere...
Salvaving is a common occupation...
The over cautious cyclist wearing a motorbike helmet.
The very end of the road. No quay, harbor, ferry boat...
Olivia and I left Murchison Falls, also locally called Kabarega falls, through a western gate, spent a night in a non descript place, Buliisa, after trying to spot the Nile delta where the Victoria Nile flows in lake Albert but Wanseko was flooded. And the next day we drove to Butiaba,also on the shore of lake Albert. Not much there except for the old timers, "The African Queen" was partly shot here. And a ferry that, like in Murchison and Wanseko, was discontinued. No surprise and a bit irrelevant fact to us as we didn't plan to travel to Congo on the other side of the lake. And also on lake Tanganyika, Tanzania, for the big military boat scenes.
Oh and Hemingway was injured in a 2nd airplane crash here after being rescued from the first one in Murchison falls...
Here is a view of the lake from the escarpment...
Indeed the Nile went high up in this area too...
The irony considering some signs are about water projects...
The African art of packing but in this case we didn't smile. This car was the only example of some food
delivery we saw in the short time we stayed there. There are hardly no shop open and apparently not much help from agencies...
But a massive highway is under construction, apparently useless for now...
I often get reactions, positive and negative, from people when I shoot them. Here, nothing...people must have other things on their minds like relocating, salvaging what can be salvaged, feeding...
Whatever museum or good restaurant that might have been available in Butiaba quickly looked a wasted wish to us...
One of the sad view of the day...
Life goes on for the fishing people...
This is the end of the road ending short of the submerged harbor.
The recent higher water level is clearly visible on the wall.
Katasunga plain in Katavi NP but that is a normal recurrence in the rainy seasons, except we are not really in a rainy season. The weathermen blame a dipole in the Indian ocean for the last weeks or months. At least the buffaloes are happy and safe.
More seriously farmers are losing their harvests and people have died, 44 in the last months, life must be hell down there.
Some rivers disappear.
An airstrip that nearly becomes an island could be of no use...Mbuyu airstrip, Selous reserve.
The biggest river in Tanzania, the Rufiji, has overflowed too, Selous.
The great Ruaha river here flooded.
This section of the great Ruaha was nearly dry a few weeks ago, near Msembe airstrip.
Rufiji river in the Selous, the usual sandbanks are gone.
Mdonya river near Msembe, usually dry...
Fields in Rufiji delta.
Rufiji river near Mtemere airstrip.
This southern part of the Rufiji is most often dry...
Floods in the far bush.
Who designed the ugly contraption...
Common scenery. View from the aircraft.
Refugee camp, one of many...
The place is called Pibor. The rains were coming which means the black cotton airstrip and the roads nearby will be closed quite often. It will get slippery and soft. Black cotton is a thick, heavy but very slippery mud. So the food was delivered in advance by trucks.
Cooking oil in these tins.
Or sorghum and lentils in these 50kg bags. This woman was keeping guard!
This woman got a box of oil tins, some leaking obviously.
An old Murle woman is not afraid of carrying 50kg on her head. Notice the white piercing jewels around her mouth.
This kid in blue clothes was salvaging grains leaked from bags before being chased by some nasty official.
These bags have been tampered with, I’m not sure what’s inside. Maybe just a lightened o shared load.
The pictures were initially shot with a smartphone while pretending calling someone, my usual technique in this paranoid country. There is always some sort of obscure official, some soldier, some policeman, some civilian to object and make your life miserable. But around the food distribution center, people looked relaxed and after a while I could shoot a bit more normally. Still I left my big camera in the bag. I was not willing to push my luck too far.
A detail of the Nile.
A refugee camp partially submerged.
2 swamp areas. The one below has burnt. No idea why or how.
More swamp areas. Notice the village. Quite a risky location in areas so flat and prone to flooding.
And here is a good example of a village flooded.
A flooded hamlet in September.
The White Nile near Bor.
The Nile near Juba.
A flooded village, Agok, 2 months ago.
One passenger was a saint?
The Nile.
A swamp somewhere near Pibor. Many swampy areas in South Sudan.
A flooded refugee camp, Rubkona.
A woman soaping herself on the road.
Flooded or not, it all depends on a few centimeters and luck.
All that green or sandy surface is water. Canoes would be convenient to visit the neighbors or go shopping.
The UN camp next door was better planned, there is hardly no sluggish water here, a better location makes all the difference.
In some camps, maybe all, the latrines have collapsed. Cholera cases have been reported. Even the camp in Juba is affected. Boots are to be sprayed when one leaves camp, for those who can…a lone tree is used for meetings, probably for men only.
Organization is to be seen here and there. A little garden, straw collected for roofing…small shops I heard. I’d like to visit one camp at some point. Well the word ‘visit’ has a weird feeling in this case.
The same picture has been cropped below to show that typical fresh water tank in blue. A foot bridge has been built to access it.
A main street in the green slime.
The weather is just irregular. One day, perfect blue sky, the next, this.
On the Nile shoreline, a hamlet.
A flooded refugee camp. Bad luck, only the camp is flooded. Such a vast expanse of land and to choose that low bit…
Just after take off out of Juba, the Nile.
More of these little grassy islands. I’m on a mission to find out.
After the wonderful Tanzanian landscapes, I feel I’ve left Heaven for Hell. Direct flight. Anyway I’m trying to have a look down there…
A flooded village. At first silly me, seeing the waters, I thought this was a succession of little bridges, but no, just a kind of a fence, probably for the field now flooded. Those rounded huts are here called "tukul".
Same kind of flooded village, same fence. Different colors for the floods.
A dyke surrounds this hamlet. The sandy color is water.
More floods on this flat country.
Farming doesn’t seem to be the major business in South Sudan, well for what I have seen so far. Here are some harvest traces.
A refugee camp in Rubkona in the north west, IDP status, that is Internally Displaced People. 1,3 million in the country. 450,000 more refugees have left to neighboring countries. Mind blowing numbers…
I’ve shown this kind of picture before: I’m still puzzled by the fact that only this camp is badly flooded around.
Yesterday I overflew and took some details. Notice the little dykes around the tents.
A part of the main street…below a cropping of the same picture:
Those brown slabs are clean water reservoirs. What an irony that people have to get into dirty water to access the clean one. Towards the right side, these are kids playing in the water under the scorching sun.
More water tanks, different models.
I’m not too sure what this is. A watchtower monitored by peacekeepers? There are a few on the perimeter…
Toilets… wadding skills required. One other camp is reported with 1 latrine for 158 persons. The crisis level says 1 for 50… it doesn’t look too bad here, no queues to be seen.
The place is called Rubkona. First we had been told to avoid overflying the village as some skirmishes had been spotted earlier in the day. Supposedly the rebels were in town and the governmental troops at the airfield.
On final, one can’t help but notice that refugee camp, which was quite flooded in that sandy colored water. Bad karma or what? These people are being terrorised, robbed, looted, abused by both camps and when finally they find some kind of shelter, the elements come in force.
Yes I can say the troops are around the airstrip but I’d say the rebels and them have passed a truce or something not to fight in the hottest moments of the day because the soldiers were really really relaxed. I even spotted one in his underwear doing his laundry! I wish I could have brought a picture because I have a feeling that a guy in boxers, Ray Bans, a red beret and the AK 47 against the basin won’t happen everyday.
Seeing these torched cars I initially thought that indeed there had been some fighting. But in this case an airplane crashed on landing and hit these jeeps.
Here is a bit of the aircraft mangled with the car wrecks.
The remains of the HS 748.
The UN peacekeepers, from Mongolia, took the job more seriously. All geared up and armed.
This Blue dude never dropped his binoculars in the 10 min I was snapping around.
A UN soldier keeps watch around the Mi 8.
Here is another picture of the flooded refugee camp. After take off it hit me that the whole area is dead flat like a pan. And out of all the places the engineers or city planners could have chosen, they selected the lowest part so that with the first rains, this hollow point would get hit. And apparently nothing else around, notice how the perimeter is clearly holding the water. I’d like to hear the story behind this, hear what those planners have to say for their defense.
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