Tag: africa

Posted on

Sudan Cracks Up

My four-day series on the coming breakup of Sudan in Slate magazine has received good notices from the likes of The Village Voice, The Browser, Bobby Ghosh of Time magazine, Microkhan, and the Wandering Savage.

In case you missed the tasty 7,500-word opus, here’s a recap:

Part 1: Meet the Bernie Madoff of Sudan

Part 2: Fighting for Freedom in the New Sudan

Part 3: South Sudan: A Million Mutinies Now?

Part 4: South Sudan’s Oil Curse

Since the series began running, the insurgent militia leader Lt. General George Athor, who I quote in Part 3 of the series, has continued his private war in Jonglei state at the cost of some 300 lives. I’m posting, after the jump, notes from my January interview with Athor. I’ll reserve comment except to say the statements of this former golden boy of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army are extremely self-serving.

That’s all for now. I’m off to write a new chapter of The Black Nile to be included in the book’s upcoming Penguin paperback edition. So much has changed on the Nile this year, and so much of if for the better, that I felt the book needed an update.

Continue reading “Sudan Cracks Up”

Posted on

Gratified in Gotham

I’m very pleased that The Black Nile has been named one of the Village Voice’s Best Books of 2010, joining the likes of Patti Smith, Milan Kundera, Jennifer Egan, and The Anthology of Rap. This comes on the heels of a swell December 5 write-up by Joshua Hammer in The New York Times Sunday Book Review.

Visa officials permitting, I’ll be back in Sudan next month, covering the January 9 referendum for an obscure online journal.

Until then, Happy Holidays. (That’s The Black Nile‘s paperback cover image, by the way.)

Posted on

A Glowing Review in The Washington Post

Travel writer Tahir Shah has published a glowing review of The Black Nile in the Washington Post. It’s especially gratifying coming from an author who knows first-hand the joys, burrs, and dangers of off-the-grid travel and reporting. Here’s an excerpt:

Morrison’s experience as a journalist shines through, as does his use of humor, which frames subjects of utter horror. These include intertribal conflict, pestilence, and the dams and deforestation that have destroyed swaths of East Africa’s ancient habitat. In the southern Sudanese town of Juba, Schon cooked up his last plates of oily spaghetti and came clean about not wanting to go on, especially since “on” was into the “malarial tinderbox” of the Sudd swampland, where “the war wasn’t quite finished in Upper Nile state — antagonistic militias stewed in camps while their leaders grappled for political power.” After his childhood buddy leaves, Morrison continues alone, and, now that the author can turn his full attention to the landscape around him, the travelogue steps up a notch. What’s impressive is how well he describes without judging. The Africa he depicts is a place where tribal rivalry complements religious and political friction; where illness, disease and utter poverty shape the lives of the majority, who lack the safety nets that so often catch Westerners when we fall.

As the journey progresses, it becomes much less of a whimsical jaunt and much more of a hard-edged report. This is Morrison at his best, lean and hungry in wild wastelands of Africa’s Sahel. His description of the Sudanese capital is memorable : “A dense static of orange grit came screaming from the desert; it filled the sky and trapped Khartoum’s eight million souls in a suffocating and radiant silica heat.”

Click here to buy your copy of The Black Nile.

And check out Tahir Shah’s most recent new book, In Arabian Nights: A Caravan of Moroccan Dreams.

Posted on

The Black Nile reviewed in the Wall Street Journal

Please check out this great review by Hugh Pope in the weekend Wall Street Journal. Here’s the kicker:

Above all, Mr. Morrison’s peppery anecdotes, his refreshing honesty and his ability to show how Africans view their difficulties save “The Black Nile” from being simply a memoir of an author’s self-prescribed endurance test. Instead, the book gives us a compelling portrait of life along the Nile—from lonely fishing communities on Lake Victoria to the cacophonous collisions of Cairo. Mr. Morrison’s more discouraging encounters also quietly pay tribute to triumphs of the human spirit. Mr. Bryan, the author’s companion and verbal sparring partner for the first third of the account, later writes to him: “It’s good to be desperate once in a while. Gives you an appreciation of the looks on people’s faces when they’re desperate and you’re not.”

Posted on

Egypt’s Battle to Control the Nile Waters

My newest piece, on the struggle for control of the Nile. Here’s the lead:

I was standing inside a colonial-era circuit house in a sprawling, malarial city called Malakal in southern Sudan. I had come to see a man about a river, but the man, an Egyptian hydrologist, wasn’t talking.

“It is forbidden,” he said solemnly, “to speak of the Nile.”

I pointed towards the window. “But it’s right there,” I said. This was, after all, a measuring station of the Egyptian water ministry, one of several it maintained in Sudan and Uganda to track the volume of the world’s longest river.

The hydrologist didn’t need to look out the window. He knew where the Nile was–he’d devoted his life to its study. But there was nothing he could say to a stranger about something so important to his nation’s survival. I might have had better luck inquiring about Tehran’s nuclear program.

You can read the whole article here, and check out other great writing on the environment at the NatGeo News Watch blog.

Posted on

Stories That Ring True: The Black Nile

Part travelogue, part crazy adventure tale, part political reportage: Veteran foreign correspondent Morrison and a buddy build a boat and paddle up the Nile River through Uganda, Sudan and Egypt. Morrison’s African river journey is a paradoxical mixture of awe-inspiring discoveries, eye-opening human interactions and perilous escapes. — Chuck Leddy, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune

Continue reading “Stories That Ring True: The Black Nile”

Posted on

Laurie Garrett on The Black Nile

“Dan Morrison is too young to have been part of the Gonzo movement. But if Hunter Thompson decided to travel the Nile, from its Ugandan source to Alexandria, encountering gun-toting whackos, crazed religious zealots, scary profiteers and a rich cast of characters in one of the world’s most contested regions — well, I think he would have loved to share his trek with Morrison.

“Fasten your seat belts, readers!”

— Laurie Garrett, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of The Coming Plague.

Posted on

Sudan: The Carter Center’s Preliminary Statement

Here’s a link to the Carter Center’s  21-page preliminary statement on Sudan’s elections. I breezed through the bullets, and the center’s key points seem to be:

1) It wasn’t a fair election.

2) Still, the exercise was a necessary one to fulfill provisions of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, thereby making it legal to hold next year’s (dis)unity referendum, in which the south will vote to leave Sudan.

3) It was good practice. (For the next unfair election?)

and,  importantly

4) Southerners didn’t get a fair shake either, thanks to intimidation by the Sudan People’s Liberation Army.

It seems accurate based on my reading and interviews. The language is neutral, not condemnatory, which will annoy some. And it further confirms what a lousy deal this has been for so many people working towards real pluralism and democracy in Sudan.

My guess is there’s probably enough praise in the document to allow the Bashir regime to declare victory, despite a similar statement from the European Union.

For details, read after the jump, and by all means check the excellent reporting at the Sudan Tribune and Radio Dabanga — and please do let me know what you think.

Continue reading “Sudan: The Carter Center’s Preliminary Statement”