Qualla: Jonglei Canal https://qualla.com/jonglei-canal en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:29 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/s/9/n/r/jonglei-canal-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Jonglei Canal https://qualla.com/jonglei-canal Jonglei Canal: Introduction https://qualla.com/jonglei-canal/ Photo credit Soleincitta, CC BY-SA 3.0. Sarah sits in the grass, slowly becoming part of it. She is a bucketwheel excavator the size of an apartment building, built in Germany, shipped to Sudan, and driven 240 kilometers across the flat nothingness east of the Sudd wetlands before a missile caught her in 1984. She has been there ever since, rusting into the landscape she was sent to destroy. Satellite images still show her outline. The Dinka and Nuer families who grazed cattle here before the diggers came grazed cattle here again after they stopped, and the unfinished canal beside Sarah fills with rainwater each wet season and empties each dry one, a 240-kilometer scar that never quite became the thing it was meant to be.

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Image: Soleincitta | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/9/n/r/jonglei-canal-wp/s9nr-jonglei-canal-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Jonglei Canal: The Dream of Draining Africa's Eden https://qualla.com/jonglei-canal/ Photo credit Soleincitta, CC BY-SA 3.0. The idea belonged to Sir William Garstin, an engineer working for the Egyptian government under British oversight. In 1904 he looked at a map of the Nile and saw a problem: the river's southwestern tributaries poured into a vast swamp called the Sudd, and roughly half that water ...

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Image: Soleincitta | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/9/n/r/jonglei-canal-wp/s9nr-jonglei-canal-the-dream-of-draining-africas-eden.mp3 0:06 2 full Jonglei Canal: A Canal Begins, A War Follows https://qualla.com/jonglei-canal/ Photo credit Soleincitta, CC BY-SA 3.0. Construction finally began in 1978, with Egyptian money and a French contractor. The plan called for 360 kilometers of canal running from Bor north to the White Nile above Malakal, bypassing the Sudd entirely. Sarah the bucketwheel, assembled on site, chewed northward at a steady...

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Image: Soleincitta | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/9/n/r/jonglei-canal-wp/s9nr-jonglei-canal-a-canal-begins-a-war-follows.mp3 0:06 3 full Jonglei Canal: The Sudd That Was Almost Lost https://qualla.com/jonglei-canal/ Photo credit Soleincitta, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Sudd is one of Africa's great wetlands, a labyrinth of papyrus channels and floating vegetation islands that shifts with the seasons and covers an area that can swell to the size of England during high floods. Shoebill storks stalk its shallows. Tiang antelope migrate through...

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Image: Soleincitta | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/9/n/r/jonglei-canal-wp/s9nr-jonglei-canal-the-sudd-that-was-almost-lost.mp3 0:06 4 full Jonglei Canal: A Half-Finished Question https://qualla.com/jonglei-canal/ Photo credit Soleincitta, CC BY-SA 3.0. Sudan and Egypt agreed to restart the project in 2008. South Sudan's independence in 2011 effectively ended that conversation. The new country inherited the unfinished trench and the rusting machinery, and while there have been occasional discussions about reviving the project, n...

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Image: Soleincitta | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/9/n/r/jonglei-canal-wp/s9nr-jonglei-canal-a-half-finished-question.mp3 0:06 5 full