Nuer porters in stream
35 mm | Negative film Kodak Panatonic
Previous PRM Number:
WT.Sudan etc.2.3
Accession Number:
2004.130.36539.1
Description:
A group of Thesiger's porters wading through a stream or khor, carrying baggage on their heads.
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
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:
Topography
Keyword:
Rivers and Streams
Other Information:
Manual Catalogue (Thesiger album card) entry for similar image - 'VOL E p.
26/top 2.
crossing creeks with ambach rafts' [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 [12/12/2003] Christopher Morton [24/9/2004] [Southern Sudan Project]
