Fishing camp of Dinka people west of Kongor. They were catching fish as lakes in the Sudd slowly dried up (dry season), and preparing the meat of game that they had found/killed. Hunting is officially illegal in Southern Sudan, but this is a relatively new regulation, and not well known or respected. A freshly killed Nile lechwe lies on a hippo hide out drying in the sun (they said they had found the hippo dead after it was wounded by another male hippo, which seemed credible considering the large 15 cm hole in the side of the hide). They were drying the hippo meat/fat in the sun, which they claimed was for family consumption. They claimed that the lechwe had been caught in fish nets. They claimed that the game meat was not for sale, but for family consumption. These families were from Panyangor, which they said was 12 hours by "footing" or 5 hours by dugout canoe.
I spotted this remote camp from a helicopter and was dropped off in the reeds by the pilot (there was no dry place for him to set down and turn off the aircraft) and sank up to my thighs as soon as I stepped off the skid of the aircraft. One of the Dinka men in the camp spoke good English, apparently after spending time in refugee camps in Kenya or Ethiopia. I didn't ask them if they had (nor did I see) any guns. It seemed that they were opportunistically harvesting any protein they could find. There is virtually no enforcement of anti-poaching laws in Southern Sudan.
- Filename
- STNMTZ_20100128_21478.tif
- Copyright
- ©2010 George Steinmetz
- Image Size
- 5616x3744 / 60.2MB
- Contained in galleries
- Sudan Wildlife
