Bor

Bor is the home of the Dinka Bor, cattle keepers and fishermen of the eastern bank of the White Nile at the southern edge of the Sudd, whose life moves between settlements on higher ground and camps near the water. The river made the place: it was a landing point on the route between Juba and the north long before it was a town, and the first modern Christian mission in what is now South Sudan was founded at Malek, 19 kilometres south, in the first decade of the twentieth century, making the area a centre of Anglican church life.

Two events fixed Bor in the country's history. In May 1983 a mutiny by southern soldiers of the Sudanese army garrison here is usually taken as the beginning of the second civil war, out of which the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army emerged under John Garang, a Dinka born at Wangulei in Twic East, north of the town. Work on the Jonglei Canal, meant to carry the Nile around the Sudd, was halted in 1984. Then in 1991, after a split in the southern movement, large numbers of Dinka civilians were killed in the Bor area, a wound that still shapes politics.

Bor, an administrative centre since Anglo-Egyptian days and the seat of government in Jonglei, grew after 2005 with returning families, aid operations and the paved road from Juba. Fighting reached the town again after December 2013, when it changed hands several times and much of it was damaged, and thousands sheltered in the United Nations site. Since then the dominant story has been water: the exceptional flooding of the early 2020s inundated large parts of the area, drowning fields and cattle and displacing many households.

Dinka Bor culture rests on cattle. A family's herd is its wealth and its history, bride-wealth is counted in cows, young men take praise names from the colour and horns of a favourite ox and compose songs about it, and disputes are settled by chiefs and customary courts with cattle as compensation. In the dry season young people move with the herds to camps near the river, where the animals are tethered at night among fires of burning dung.

Fishing is unusually important here compared with drier Dinka areas, because the Sudd and the river are at the door, and spear fishing and canoe work are skills learned young. Age-sets, initiation and the authority of elders structure society, and dances and wrestling matches between sections are the main public events of the dry season.

The Anglican church has deep roots in Bor, with hymns and services in Dinka, and church networks organise schools, clinics and much community life; Catholic and other congregations are present too. The town has produced a striking number of national political and military figures, and its people are conscious of that history. The killings of 1991, the fighting of 2013 and the years of flooding are all discussed, but carefully, and visitors do well to listen rather than take positions.

A United Nations estimate put Bor's population at about 728,000 people in 2024, and the figures have moved sharply with fighting and flooding. The town is low and spread out, with tin roofs and mud brick near the centre and round thatched houses and cattle byres beyond, and raised ground has become valuable since the floods.

Cattle, fishing and sorghum farming support most households, alongside state government work, trade and employment with aid organisations. The paved road from Juba makes Bor better supplied than other towns in the region, and lorries bring rice, sugar, oil and fuel; prices still rise quickly when the road is insecure. Many families have depended on food assistance through the flood years.

Days begin early with milking, fishing and the market, and slow through the afternoon heat. Water comes from the river and boreholes, power from generators and solar panels, and mobile coverage is better in the town than outside it. Flooding, cattle raiding and violence elsewhere in Jonglei, and the cost of food and fuel are the constant subjects of local life, and many households still live away from land they once farmed.

Fish and milk dominate the everyday diet. The Nile and the swamps yield tilapia, Nile perch and catfish, eaten fresh and grilled over charcoal, stewed, or split and sun-dried for storage and trade, and dried fish stewed with okra or groundnut paste is a common meal. Milk, fresh or soured, comes from the herds and is the prized food of the cattle camps.

Sorghum is the staple grain, ground and cooked into a stiff porridge or fermented and baked as kisra, the thin sour flatbread, and eaten with stews of okra, often dried and pounded, beans, leafy greens or groundnut paste. Maize is grown as well, and wild foods from the wetland, including water-lily roots and seeds, become important in hungry seasons and after floods.

Meat is food for occasions: an ox is slaughtered and shared at a wedding, a funeral or a settlement between families, while goat is eaten more freely. Market food reflects the road from Juba, with rice, wheat flour, sugar and cooking oil, and ful, stewed brown beans, and bread are sold at stalls. Sweet black tea and milky tea are drunk through the day, and sorghum beer is brewed at home for gatherings.