The Vanishing Lakes of Africa

The first map shows Lake Chad in northern Africa in 1963. Since 1964, the lake level has continuously fallen with the surface area reducing from about 25,000 km2 to less than 2,000 km2 today, as seen in the second map in 2007.

The southern shores of Lake Chad are fringed by great stands of papyrus swamps shown in the Apollo space image. Papyrus

islands can also be seen in the same photo.

Thousands of Yeddina people made a living on the papyrus islands and in the swamps, which have now been lost. Much of the water has been diverted for use in irrigation. Deforestation, desertification and drought have destroyed almost all of their former habitat.

Lake Naivasha in eastern Africa in the ‘60’s supported extensive papyrus swamps. In the last ten years, or so, flower farms attracted 350,

000 workers to the lake (200 tons of flowers are exported every day to Europe from Kenya).

The Lake has begun to dry because of excessive water abstraction and drought. The earlier papyrus swamps are mostly gone and the lake may also be lost unless water conservation measures are enforced now.

Copyright 2010 John J. Gaudet, all rights reserved.

Uganda to Allow Drilling in the African Queen Papyrus Swamp

The film masterpiece African Queen directed by John Huston and starring Humphrey Bogart, Katharine Hepburn and Robert Morley was shot in 1951 on a number of locations including papyrus swamps at the mouth of the Victoria Nile in Uganda. Available for years in video it was rereleased as a DVD with much hullabaloo. Back in Africa where the film was made now comes disturbing news of changes caused by a multibillion barrel oil discovery on Lake Albert.

Oil - 1.7 billion barrels has been discovered un

der and around Lake Albert. One of the Rift Valley African Great Lakes, it is shared by the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda.Exploratory drilling has already begun in earnest, a pipeline to Lake Albert from Mobasa on the Kenya Coast is being built, a refinery is planned and the governments concerned are standing by to rake in the profits.

It was in the papyrus swamps in this part

of Africa on the Victoria Nile just before it enters Lake Albert where the famous scene was captured of Bogart shimmying up the m

ast of the African Queen and yelling out, "Nothing but grass and papyrus as far as you can see!" Part of the northern oil block region on the Ugandan side lies inside the Murchison Falls National Park at the northern end of the Lake. It is here that the Nile enters the Lake after traveling northwest from Lake Victoria. Once there it exits the Lake a bit further north, after which it is

called, the Albert Nile.

At the place where the Nile enters Lake Albert is a delta and papyrus swamps that were shown in the film. Just south of here is a point of land called Port Butiaba, which was the Uganda location of the Kungdu Village and Mission Church in the film. You remember the scene where Bogart first has dinner with Hepburn and Morley as his stomach grinds away making horrendous noises. That small lake port and surrounding village will be redeveloped by Tullow Oil, a London based oil company exploring the Lake. They intend to use the port for the transportation of heavy machines for offshore oil drilling in Lake Albert.

Sammy Tuja in Afronline, a news alert Internet agency distributed by Telpress (http://www.afronline.org/), also informs us that the companies involved are conducting exploratory drilling within Murchison Falls National Park, a crucial site of biodiversity, and that gas flaring will be allowed in both Blocks 1 and 2 along the northeastern end of the Lake in full view of the Park.

Terry Macalister in the Guardian, Daniel Howden in the Independent and also Pete Browne in the NY Times (Green Inc.) in February, 2010, all reported concerns that gas flaring on Lake Albert has the potential to release huge volumes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, as well as impacting adversely on the Murchison Falls Park.

The Park is one of the world’s most precious biodiversity resources, and the potential is here to cause massive pollution in the water of the Nile and the Lake, as well as in the papyrus swamps which abound on both the river and lake.

© Copyright J. Gaudet, 2012, all rights reserved.

For more information visit:

1. Uganda Travel Guide @balukusguide Oil drilling in National Park http://bit.ly/YrA3KJ

2. The British environmental and human rights organization, PLATFORM, at www.carbonweb.org/uganda 

3. Uganda Radio Network: http://ugandaradionetwork.com/a/story.php?s=45212

 

 

Alexander’s City By The Sea

On arrival I have to ask myself why I am here. This is important as there are a great number of distractions in this city.

It starts as I am shown to my room. Since I’m only here a short while, I have booked into the Hotel Cecil, a luxury hotel known for its historical connections, Agatha Christie, Churchill, Noel Coward and Somerset Maugham all stayed there, and during WWII so did British Intelligence.

I am preceded by a porter through the red carpeted lobby to the brass-caged, turn-of the-last-century museum piece elevator with two cars paneled in lovingly carved dark wood. Once in the spacious room, the porter walks to the window draws the floor-length red velour and gold drapes, and with a flourish throws open the window and the shutters. The room is flooded with sunlight and I am invited to step out onto the balcony where I am presented with a breathtaking scene. The sea, a calm glittering surface of Mediterranean blue, is framed by a breakwater a line of dead white, the low-lying limestone and masonary that continues out from the cornice of the shore and encircles the bay. It resembles an enormous circle of blue water caught in an eternal white embrace. I suddenly see why blue and white were the colors of ancient Greece.

Wait a minute, I ask myself. Why are you here?

I step back from the balcony and recall that I’m here to look over the new Great Library of Alexandria. It was here that the Ptolemys set out to collect of all the major written works of Western history. By the time of the Romans this amounted to a million papyrus scrolls.

Second, I’m here to see if there is any interest in using modern made papyrus paper from Cairo to reproduce some of the ancient scrolls. This was an idea of my old friend Hassan Ragab, to recreate some semblance of the original Great Library. I have an appointment with Hossam El Deeb and Wael Mohamed in the new document restoration laboratory in the Library. I hope to see my questions answered the afternoon of my arrival, which will leave the next day for sightseeing.

My plan is brought to a halt on getting out of the taxi in front of the Library, which I learn to my chagrin is closed. My taxi driver is ecstatic since this means I will definitely have to use him to return to the hotel. "Or," as he suggests, his eyes brightening like a child in a candy store when told he can sample as many of the goodies as he wants, “I take you to catacombs, yes?” “No.”
“I take you to Pompeii Pillar, yes?” No.”
“I take you all day only a hundred pounds, yes?” and so the litany begins, and will continue every time I get into a local cab.

I dismiss the taxi and walk around until I find a Library guard. He tells me the place is closed, but, “Only until 3 in the afternoon." Since they stay open until 7 this leaves me plenty of time. I later find out they are closed because of a surprise visit by the President’s wife, Susan Mubarak, who has a big interest in and has supported the Library for years. She has motored out from Cairo with a fleet of Mercedes that are now waiting in the driveway of the Library.

To kill an hour or so until opening time, I wander into a coffee shop, the Café Trianon, an Art Deco beauty left over from 1905 when Alexandria still thought of itself as an extension of Europe. Since the 60’s and Nasser’s intervention it is definitely now a part of Egypt and the United Arab Republic, even though most of the others have gone their own way. Still, the men here are prone to European styles and manners. I saw one broad-chested male with a Windsor knot larger than any I’ve ever seen. The knot shortened his dark red silk tie, but with his blue blazer, white shirt and short beard he reminded me of a picture of the Prince of Wales, the Edwardian one, later George V.

Wait, there she goes. I stand on the street with a throng of several hundred Egyptian women dressed in everything from head-to-toe burquas, with lace grills for mouth and eye holes, to Yves St. Laurent jeans, Liberty scarves and Armani sunglasses. We all wave goodbye as Susan roars off in her Mercedes motorcade. Shades of Washington DC, where I have stood in the same way on countless occasions, always assuming there really is someone of importance inside that dark-windowed juggernaut.

I now turn and look at the Great Library. A spectacular building, all glass, white stone and marble. My feet, perhaps on the same ground that Alexander walked on, tingle as a frisson of pleasure sweeps through me.


Next post will definitely be on the Great Library.



© Copyright J. Gaudet, 2009, all rights reserved.