Long-horned cattle wade through flooded lands and climb a slope along a canal that has become a lifeline for displaced families in South Sudan. Smoke from burning dung rises near makeshift homes of mud and grass, where thousands now live after floods submerged their villages. 

“Too much suffering,” said Bichiok Hoth Chuiny, a woman in her 70s, supporting herself with a stick as she walked in the newly established community of Pajiek in Jonglei state, north of the capital, Juba. 

For the first time in decades, flooding forced Chuiny to flee. Her efforts to protect her home by building dykes failed, leaving her former village of Gorwai a swamp. 

“I had to be dragged in a canoe up to here,” Chuiny said, standing in what is now her new home. 

Such flooding has become an annual catastrophe in South Sudan, which the World Bank has described as “the world’s most vulnerable country to climate change and also the one most lacking in coping capacity." 

This year alone, more than 379,000 people have been displaced by flooding, according to the U.N. humanitarian agency. 

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Seasonal flooding has long shaped the lifestyle of pastoral communities near the Sudd wetlands, the largest in Africa and part of the Nile River floodplain. But since the 1960s, the swamp has steadily expanded, inundating villages, destroying farmland, and killing livestock. 

“The Dinka, Nuer, and Murle communities of Jonglei are losing the ability to keep cattle and farm as they used to,” said Daniel Akech Thiong, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group. 

Coping amid crises 

South Sudan, independent since 2011, is ill-prepared to handle such challenges. Civil war broke out in 2013, and although a peace deal was signed in 2018, the country remains plagued by crises. Approximately 2.4 million people are internally displaced due to both conflict and flooding. 

The latest flooding has been exacerbated by various factors, including the opening of upstream dams in Uganda after Lake Victoria reached its highest levels in five years. 

Amid this devastation, the century-old Jonglei Canal, an unfinished colonial-era project, has provided a temporary refuge for many. 

“We don’t know where this flooding would have pushed us if the canal was not here,” said Peter Kuach Gatchang, the paramount chief of Pajiek. In his new settlement, Gatchang is already cultivating a small garden of pumpkins and eggplants. 

The 340-kilometer (211-mile) canal was conceived in the early 1900s by Anglo-Egyptian authorities to boost the Nile’s flow toward Egypt. Its construction was interrupted by Sudan’s civil wars and has never been completed. 

Neglected and isolated 

The Pajiek community faces severe neglect. 

“We have no school and no clinic here,” said Gatchang. “If you stay for a few days, you will see us carrying patients on stretchers to Ayod town.” 

Reaching Ayod, the county headquarters, requires a six-hour trek through waist-high water. 

Pajiek also lacks a mobile network and government presence. The area is under the control of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-in-Opposition, founded by President Salva Kiir’s rival turned Vice President, Riek Machar. 

Villagers depend on aid. Hundreds of women recently gathered in a field to receive food assistance from the World Food Program (WFP). 

Nyabuot Reat Kuor, a mother of eight, carried home a 50-kilogram (110-pound) bag of sorghum on her head. 

“This flooding has destroyed our farm, killed our livestock, and displaced us for good,” she said. “Our old village of Gorwai has become a river.” 

When food aid runs out, Kuor and others survive on wild leaves and water lilies from the swamp. However, international funding cuts have halved food rations in recent years. 

More than 69,000 people in Ayod county rely on WFP assistance, but delivery challenges abound. 

“There are no passable roads at this time of the year, and the canal is too low to support boats carrying large amounts of food,” said John Kimemia, a WFP airdrop coordinator. 

Health crisis in the swamp 

In Paguong village, surrounded by floodwaters, the health center is critically undersupplied. 

“The last time we got drugs was in September. Women carried them on foot from Ayod town,” said clinical officer Juong Dok Tut. 

Patients, mostly women and children, waited on the ground to see the doctor. Panic spread when a thin green snake slithered through the crowd. While this one wasn’t poisonous, many others in the area are deadly.  

Four life-threatening snakebite cases were treated in October, but antivenom supplies are now depleted. 

“Without treatment, we don’t know what to do if it happens again,” Tut said.