Nuer porters in stream
35 mm | Negative film Kodak Panatonic
Previous PRM Number:
WT.Southern Sudan.8a.34
Accession Number:
2004.130.36012.1
Description:
A line of Thesiger's porters wading along a stream or khor, holding baggage on their heads.
One of Thesiger's horses is also being waded through the water.
On his first four month trek in Western Nuerland Thesiger employed about thirty porters at a shilling a day, who each carried about forty pounds in weight.
Thesiger conceded that many of the porters were necessary simply to carry food for the others.
Photographer:
Wilfred Patrick Thesiger
Date of Photo:
1938 - 1939
Region:
[Southern Sudan] Wahda
Group:
Nuer
PRM Source:
Wilfred Patrick Thesiger
Acquired:
Accepted as Art in Lieu of Inheritance Tax by H.M. Government and allocated to the Pitt Rivers Museum, March 2004
Other Owners:
n/a
Class:
Expedition , Topography
Keyword:
Bag , Rivers & Streams
Other Information:
Manual Catalogue (Thesiger album card) entry for similar image - 'VOL E p.
26/Treking with Nuer porters.' [Elin Bornemann 24/5/2004] In The Life of My Choice (Harper Collins 1987) Thesiger notes (page 299) that 'with the country still under water, I sometimes had to cross as many as forty or fifty khors during a day's march.
Most of them I could wade but some I had to swim.
The porters carried segments of ambach which grew locally, and with these they fashioned small rafts to ferry the loads across the deeper khors.' Chris Morton [17/9/2004]
Recorder:
Elin Bornemann [11/12/2003] Christopher Morton [15/9/2004] [Southern Sudan Project]
