The Blue Nile
The Blue Nile is the source of most of the floodwater that gives Egypt life.
Although it is less than half as long as the White Nile, in the rainy season it carries
four times as much water.
Like the white Nile, the Blue Nile starts life as a mountain stream.
It is called the Little Abbai and flows
to Lake Tana, 112 kilometres away.
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Forests and Falls
Leaving the lake, the Blue Nile soon plunges through rockpools and rapids until it reaches the Tisisat Falls,
where its waters pour over a 46 metre drop. This is the start of a huge curve which takes the nile round
three quarters of a circle through the Gojam Mountains. On the way it passes through the Blue Nile Gorge,
which is 1.6 kilometres deep and about the same distance across, where the river flows between sheer cliff
faces.
Leaving the mountains behind, the Blue Nile flows past small villages of cone shaped grass huts.
The villagers live mainly on maize, but they eat fish or antelope meat from time to time. The women fetch
their water from the nile in gourds, which are the empty rinds of giant fruit. The way of life in these
villages, cut off by poor communications, has changed little over thousands of years.
The Gezira Scheme
The Gezira scheme was begun in the 1920s when the Sennar Dam was built. It is one of the largest irrigation
schemes on the Nile.
This scheme holds back and stores some of the Blue Nile seasonal floodwater, which is released into a canal
running parallel to the river. The canal irrigates an area of land between the rivers about 320 kilometres
long by 100 kilometres wide. Cotton and wheat are the main crops here. In the 1960s the Gezira scheme was
extended when a second dam was built at Roseires, together with a power station to provide electricity for
the cities at the junction of the two Niles.
Extract from “Great Rivers: The Nile”. Written by Michael Pollard, London, Evans Brothers Limited, 1997.
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