Word: jonglei
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Dates: during 1983-1983
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This curious spectacle has occurred almost daily since July 1980, when digging began on black Africa's biggest current engineering project: the excavation of the Jonglei Canal in southern Sudan. Scheduled for completion in 1985, the canal will be one of the world's longest artificial waterways, stretching an imposing 220 miles...
...Jonglei project, named after the nearly inaccessible province it crosses, is being built to carry needed water to Sudan's arid north and to Egypt. The channel could irrigate some 600,000 acres of land by diverting 30% of the flow of the White Nile River, as much as 5.2 billion gal. of water a day, around the Sudd, a vast swampland in southern Sudan...
...permanently clogged with reeds and papyrus and infested with 63 species of mosquito. From May to October, the White Nile floods and temporarily extends the swamp another 4,300 sq. mi. Says Daniel Yong, a member of the area's nomadic Dinka tribe and a Jonglei Canal project official: "In the rainy season there is water everywhere, but in the dry season you can die of thirst." The Sudd proved an obstacle to 19th century explorers, but today it is more of a hindrance to economic development. It can take a year for water entering the swamp to course...
...wide channel, nearly half of which is now excavated, CCI is using 20 bulldozers, five road graders, three cranes and five shovels. The star performer is clearly "Sarah," a West German-built excavator that was named after a Sudanese official's daughter. By the time the Jonglei Canal is finished, the bucket wheeler will have moved 3.5 billion cu. ft. of earth, enough to fill the Great Pyramid more than 38 times. Getting the eight-story-high, 2,300-ton excavator and its 1 million spare parts to Sudan, the largest nation in Africa and independent since...
...issues raised by the digging of the Jonglei Canal are so complex that many environmentalists caution against any predictions. Not so British Biologist Stephen Cobb, who headed one Jonglei survey team. "It won't be the disaster as first suspected," he says. "On balance, it is going to make life better for a lot of people." -ByAnastasia Toufexis. Reported byRobertC. Wurmstedt/Jonglei