Chapter 27 - The Mighty Nile River

It is impossible to travel throughout Eastern Africa without coming across the world's longest river, the Nile. Toto saw many places along the Nile in Egypt, Ethiopia, Uganda, from the air over Sudan and even in Rwanda.

Today when most people think of the Nile River, they think of Egypt. Even modern Egyptians told me that Egypt would have very little wealth or people if it weren't for the Nile River. Its waters allows Egyptians to grow crops and provide fresh water in the desert. But the Nile starts much further south, near the equator in Africa. While most rivers you think of flow north to south or east to west, the Nile is one of the few of world's major rivers that flows south to north! So if you want to follow the Nile River upstream on a map, you actually have to move your finger down, or south. To complicate things further, the Nile actually splits into two rivers at Khartoum, Sudan—the White Nile that starts in Uganda and the Blue Nile that originates in Ethiopia.

Toto visited both the White and the Blue Nile origins. The furthest away of the two is where Lake Victoria starts to empty into the White Nile River at Jinga, Uganda. There are whitewater rapids where the river starts to flow and many kayakers like this one love to paddle the river's warm waters. Lake Victoria, Africa's largest lake, is actually relatively high up in altitude on an elevated plateau. So when the water leaves Lake Victoria, it flows downhill, which is north towards Egypt. 

Some people like to know exactly where to find the start, or "headwaters," of a river, the furthest point away from where the river empties out into the ocean. While Lake Victoria is the start of the Nile, several rivers empty into the lake, the furthest away of which is a river that starts in the Nyungwe Forest in Rwanda. I didn't realize it at the time, but when I went trekking to see wild chimpanzees in the Nyungwe Forest with this forest ranger, I was actually traveling over streams that were the headwaters of the Nile River. The water in those Rwandan streams would eventually empty into the Mediteranean Sea north of Cairo, Egypt.

The water has to travel a long way before it makes it to the Mediterranean Sea, though. While still in Uganda it has to go through the narrowest point of the Nile, the seven-meter wide Murchison Falls. I went there as well and saw the normally calm river violently rage through this narrow gap and fall forty meters.

Such agitation made this funny foam that floated on the Nile River for quite a distance. At this point there are many hippos and crocodiles that live along the White Nile River in the Ugandan Murchison Falls National Park. Can you see the hippo's head poking up through the foam in this picture? You wouldn't want to swim in the river at this spot!

While Lake Victoria is the furthest source of the Nile, 90% of the water and 96% of the sediment that Egyptian farms rely on for their rich farm soil comes from the brown waters of Ethiopia's Lake Tana. I went there as well and took a full-day boat ride to see many of the beautiful monasteries built over the years along the lake. In many ways, the life on Lake Tana seemed not to have changed over the years. This fisherman still paddled in a boat made out of papyrus stalks, which float on the water. He also needed to watch out for dangerous hippos, as we saw some along the shores of the lake.

I read that the White Nile was named after the whitish clay that was suspended in the waters along that tributary, or branch, of the river. I'm not sure why they call the Ethiopian tributary the Blue Nile, since the water looks quite brown to me, as you can see in this picture of Lake Tana. In southern Egypt the water was finally blue, but then turned brown again by the time it reached Cairo, due to all the pollution and soil that empties into the river in Egypt.

I didn't get a chance to see where the Blue and White Nile rivers meet in the capital city of Sudan, Khartoum. I did fly over Sudan, though, on my way to Egypt during the day. So I snapped this picture of the Nile River reflecting the sunlight in the Sahara Desert of Sudan. I hope someday to be able to see where to the two rivers meet in Khartoum.

Part of the reason the water turns blue again in Egypt, which is the country north of Sudan, is because the Egyptians built a large dam in the city of Aswan. When you build a dam, the water rises up behind it, flooding a large area. When the Aswan High Dam was completed in 1970, it created the world's largest manmade lake, Lake Nassar (named after the Egyptian ruler who masterminded the dam's construction). Just as a bathtub fills slowly, it took many years for the lake to fill up. The water started backing up in 1964, when the dam was under construction, and reached capacity in 1976. The problem was that many ancient Egyptian temples were in the area that would be flooded. So Egypt, with the help of many other countries, had to move these huge temples to higher ground.

I visited Abu Simel, one of the most amazing of these temple complexes. The engineers took four years to cut the two 3300-year-old temples into large pieces and move it 60 feet up the hill, where they reassembled it. The statues still look out onto the Nile River as they always did when the Pharaoh Ramses II built the temples (one for him and one for his wife who came from the region called Nubia). Now they just have a higher view of a very large lake! The funny thing is that the temples were covered with sand for hundreds of years until a Swiss explorer rediscovered them in 1813. Later explorers dug out all the sand so the two temples could be seen.

My final stop along my exploration of the River Nile was Cairo, the populated capital of Egypt. To get there, I took a boat trip down the Nile, and I saw many farmers growing green fields of food for the many Egyptians and their animals. For thousands of years, the Egyptian farmers have relied on the water of the Nile and the rich soil it carries from Ethiopia to feed the country. From the air, Egypt is a large beige desert with a blue river surrounded by a strip of bright green fields. Over the years they have invented ways to irrigate the fields further and further away from the river, literally turning desert into rich soil. Before the Aswan Dam the level of the Nile flooding was so important to the Egyptian government they developed "Nileometers" to measure the river's relative level. The rulers used the measurements from the Nileometers to set the taxes the farmers had to pay, since higher water would mean more successful crops that season. Here is a picture of one of these ancient Nileometers.

By the time the Nile reaches the enormous city of Cairo, it looks like any other river running through a huge city. With twenty million people, Cairo is much larger than any city in the U.S. or Europe. Modern day citizens of Cairo still use boats to cross the river and transport goods as the waters from Rwanda, Uganda, Ethiopia and Sudan flow onwards to the Mediterranean Sea.

Travel Questions on the Nile River:

1. What are the names of the Nile River's two tributaries?
2. What is the name of the Sudanese city where these two tributaries meet?
3. Which of the two tributaries contributes 90% of the water that flows into the Nile in Egypt?
4. What is the name of the city where Lake Victoria empties into the Nile?
5. In what country are the headwaters of the Nile?
6. What causes the foam that floats on the Nile River that Toto saw in Uganda?
7. What was the fisherman's boat made out of on Lake Tana, Ethiopia?
8. Why did Egypt need to move the temples of Abu Simbel?

Global Nomad Questions on Nile River:

1. Draw a picture of you on your favorite part of the Nile River.
2. Look at a map of Africa. List all the countries through which the Nile River flows.
3. Several countries have built hydroelectric dams along the Nile river to create electricity. Do a cybersearch on hydroelectric power and write an essay on how dams create electricity. What are the advantages and disadvantages of hydroelectric power?
4. Research what the Nile River meant to the ancient Egyptians. Write a paragraph about the many temples and sites they located along the river.
5. The region where southern Egypt and northern Sudan meet is a region called "Nubia." Do a cybersearch on Nubia and write a paragraph about Nubian culture and history.

 

Comments

[Douglas Effinger]

Dear Mr. Chmielewski,
I am a 6th Grade Social Studies Teacher at Marble Falls Middle School and have just perused your blog and read the article of your travels in Africa in The Picayune. I think its awesome what you have offered on your blog and am sharing the info with my partner teacher here. I understand that you are probably very busy with things in your life but I was wondering if you would possibly consider coming to our school and giving a presentation to our students? Judging from what I've seen and read I know that this would be a real treat, not just for the children, but for the adults, also. If it is at all possible, would you please get back to me on this? Thank you very much for your time.
Sincerely,
Douglas Effinger
6th Grade Social Studies
MFMS