 THE RIVER NILE |
The River Nile has always been an object of interest and fascination. For a long time it was a mystery where its origins are and that is why there has been many books written on those expeditions on two stream of the River; the Blue Nile and the White Nile. In the Sudan the river plays an essential role in every day life, but it also has symbolic meaning, as the locals say that whoever drinks from the Nile will for sure return to the Sudan. Next some background to this world's longest river that flows through the Sudan and many other countries in that part of Africa.
From its major source, Lake Victoria in east Central Africa, the Nile flows generally North through Uganda, Sudan, and Egypt to the Mediterranean Sea, for 5584 km (3470 mi). From its remotest head stream, the Ruvyironza River in Burundi, the river is 6671 km (4145 mi) long. The river basin has an area of more than 3,349,000 sq km (1,293,049 sq mi). The Ruvyironza, regarded as the ultimate source of the Nile, is one of the upper branches of the Kagera River in Tanzania. The Kagera follows the boundary of Rwanda northward, turns along the boundary of Uganda, and drains into Lake Victoria.
On leaving Lake Victoria at the site of the now-submerged Ripon Falls, the Nile rushes for 483 km (300 mi) between high rocky walls and over rapids and cataracts, at first north west and then west, until it enters Lake Albert. The section between the two lakes is called the Victoria Nile. The river leaves the northern end of Lake Albert as the Albert Nile, flows through northern Uganda, and at the Sudan border becomes the Bahr al Jabal. At its junction with the Bahr al Ghazal, the river becomes the Bahr al Abyad, or the White Nile. In Khartoum the White Nile is joined by the Blue Nile, or Bahr al Azraq, so named because of the colour of the water. The Blue Nile, 1529 km (950 mi) long, gathers its volume mainly from Lake T'ana, in the Ethiopian Highlands; it is known here as the Abbai. From Khartoum the Nile flows north east; 322 km (200 mi) below that city, it is joined by the Atbarah River. During its course from the confluence of the Atbarah through the Nubian Desert, the river makes two deep bends. The Nile enters the Mediterranean Sea by a delta that separates into the Rosetta and Damietta distributaries. The River Nile valley is home to a host of wildlife, including Nile crocodile, hippopotamuses, more than 300 species of birds, and numerous fish species.
| Europeans considered the source of the Nile one of the last great mysteries on earth until the mid-nineteenth century, when a series of expeditions brought British and German explorers into the Lake Victoria region for the first time. These explorers included the Englishmen John Hanning Speke, who reached Lake Victoria in 1858 and Ripon Falls in 1862, and Sir Samuel White, who sighted Lake Albert in 1864; a German, Georg August Schweinfurth, who explored (1868-1871) the western feeders of the White Nile; and a British-American, Sir Henry Morton Stanley. In 1875 Stanley sailed around Lake Victoria; in 1889 he traced the Semliki River and reached Lake Edward and the Ruwenzori Range.
For thousands of years, the Nile's yearly flood, the result of August rains in the Ethiopian highlands and the runoff from snowmelt in the Mountains of the Moon, flooded the Nile delta in Egypt. As the floodwaters receded, a heavy layer of silt remained. The intensive irrigated agriculture in the fertile Nile river valley supported one of the world's earliest civilizations and in more recent times earned Egypt the title "Breadbasket of the Middle East."
The first dam on the Nile, the High Dam, was built in 1902 and heightened in 1936. The Makwar Dam, now called the Sennar Dam, was built across the Blue Nile south of Khartoum following World War I (1914-1918) to provide storage water for cotton plantations in the Sudan. A dam at Jabal Awliya was constructed on the White Nile south of Khartoum in 1937. But the Aswân High Dam, which opened in the early 1970s, has most dramatically transformed the ecology and economic role of the Nile. It created one of the world's largest reservoirs, Lake Nasser, allowed the Egyptian government to produce hydroelectric power, control flooding, and minimise droughts. But it has severely reduced sedimentation deposits that the floodwaters once brought to the delta and increased the river's salinity. Consequently, the Nile delta has become less fertile, forcing Egyptian farmers to increase the use of chemical fertilisers.
The lack of sedimentation has had other harmful effects, such as erosion of the river's banks. The silt in the floodwaters also fed into the coastal waters of the Mediterranean Sea, nourishing the algae blooms and sea-bottom detritus that in turn fed sardines, shrimp, and other sea creatures. Since the Aswân High Dam's opening, fish and shrimp catches have declined significantly.
|
