![]() ![]() These forces are being felt even in places spared the worst of the deluge. This is so much bigger than the most recent event of this kind." "There are historical patterns that suggest these large events tend to last for decades," he told AFP. But nothing of this magnitude has been observed since record-keeping began, said Nall. South Sudan is prone to seasonal flooding. This is the worst I've seen," he said, using a cane as mud sucked at his feet. ![]() He remembered a great flood in the distant past, around the age he reached adulthood. ![]() Once numbering thousands, today just a few hundred people live in Tong on a scattering of islands one hour by canoe from Bentiu.Īmong them is Magok Bangany, an 80-year-old farmer born and raised in the village. Some are clinging on, trying to survive on whatever high land is left. Little remained but the very tips of thatch huts and masses of water lilies - the last resort for the desperately hungry, he said. Yian indicated where farmers once tilled land and children went to school somewhere beneath the surface. Humanitarian organisations, not the government, are providing services in the beleaguered city.īeyond the sandbags and levees, the picture is bleak. Inside one tent, three women on intravenous drips shared a single bed. Malnutrition has turned the boy's hair the colour of straw.Ī health clinic serving 20,000 people had just 10 staff when visited by AFP. "In the morning, he would always be hungry and crying, but we did not have any food," she told AFP as she waited to see a doctor. Kuyar Teny waded through floodwaters to reach Bentiu with her famished 18-month-old grandson. Most arrive with nothing and join an enormous population in dire need, including over 100,000 refugees from the country's 2013-2018 civil war. Today your place may be dry, but tomorrow it is underwater," said Duop Yian, who grew up around Bentiu and works for the Danish Refugee Council, a humanitarian organisation. In January, at the height of the dry season, satellite imagery showed the area subsumed by floods expanded 3,000 square kilometres (1,160 square miles) within a single week. They want to go back."īut land is becoming more uninhabitable by the day. "They do not know how to survive," community leader John Both Wang told AFP as women from his flooded hamlet waited for food donations near a fast-growing shantytown in Bentiu. Even during the dry season the levels stayed high, creating what Nall called "permanent wetlands" in places like Bentiu.Įxperts say the water in some areas may not recede for years, even decades.įar from a one-off shock, the floods represent a more permanent change for subsistence farmers and cattle herders, who are fleeing to cities, totally unprepared for what comes next. Vast tracts of land became so saturated that water could not drain away. Record-breaking rainfall over great lakes in upstream countries pushed enormous volumes of water into the White Nile, spilling over the plains downstream in a slow-moving disaster. Millions of livestock have perished and 10 percent of the country's arable land has turned to swamp at a time when 7.7 million people do not have enough to eat. One million people in the Nile Basin nation have been affected by year-on-year floods that have submerged an area larger than Denmark in a cycle of extreme inundations since 2019. The monumental crisis is illustrative of a wider disaster befalling South Sudan, the world's youngest country and one of the most vulnerable to climate change. "There's no record of Bentiu being flooded like it has. "It's basically become an island," said William Nall, head of research, assessment and monitoring at the World Food Programme (WFP), which rations out whatever grains, vegetable oil and peanut paste make it through the waterways choked with reeds. ![]()
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