Even in an undeveloped country like South Sudan, Ganyliel can feel like the middle of nowhere; a bunch of tiny islands surrounded by a gigantic swampy floodplain fed by the River Nile during rainy season. To get here I took a helicopter from the capital, then ditched my sneakers for gumboots, and waded out into water is too deep for an SUV and too shallow for a speedboat. I board a canoe made of a hollowed-out palm tree.
"This river is very protective to the people of Ganliel," says my companion in the canoe, Lorjack Riak Lorjack. He fled to these swamps when fighting erupted in his hometown of Bentiu. He fears government soldiers and other armed groups who he says are systematically killing off people of his ethnic group, the Nuer.
Read and listen to the full report on NPR
