About Bor

Bor is a county within Southern Sudan, which over the last two decades of the Sudan civil war has suffered devastation beyond imagination. Bor town, where the civil war that has now engulfed and spread anarchy to the entire Sudan began, is the headquarters of Jongulei State, Bor and the other two sisterly counties of Twic and Duk. Due to its close proximity to the Nile and its historical, as well as economic, importance, Bor has suffered unprecedented consequences of war ranging from mass displacement and starvations to isolation from the rest of the world for the last 22 years by the successive Islamic regimes in Khartoum .

Bor County is comprised of five court centers, also known as Payams. These are Jalle, Baidit, Makuac, Anyidi and Kolnyang. A court center, or Payam, is a collection of four to five villages put under one court and one leadership at the civil level. The county covers a landmass of 6,890 square miles with a population of over 180,000 people, according to the Khartoum government's statistics of the late 1980's.

Topographically, the county is a low-lying clay plain prone to floods almost on a yearly basis because of heavy downpours of rain from April to December and due to the flatness of the land, which makes drainage impossible. Bor sits on a swampy part of Southern Sudan, known as Sudd, that holds a billion gallons of water from the Nile and rains collected. Fortunately, the land is fertile and supports crops as well as other plant growth. Before the war, farming was one of the major sources of livelihood besides cattle rearing.