Photos

A bit monotonous, I agree. This is the Sudd, one of the largest wetlands in the world, an enormous swampy area along the White Nile in southern Sudan, consisting mainly of papyrus groves.
In February 1983 I travelled by boat from Juba in the deep south to the city of Kosti, south of Khartoum, a journey of more than three days. The second day we were completely surrounded by papyrus all the time, the shipper stearing his boat carefully through the shallow waters, trying not to get lost among the number of river-branches. Once or twice we got stuck for a while on a sand bank.
Only towards the evening we saw he first signs of life, a few naked men in dug-out canoes, and later a Chevron team searching for oil; a helicopter waiting to take them back to civilization whenever needed.
A few months later civil war broke out and was fuelled for more than twenty years by the huge reserves of oil found in this area.
This picture was scanned from a Kodachrome slide.