Wau, Sudan

Wau (Arabic: واو Wāw; also Wow or Waw) is a town in southern Sudan on the western bank of the Jur River, and is the capital of the West Bahr al Ghazal state. Initially established as a zariba (fortified base) by slave-traders in the 19th century, it became an administrative center during the time of Anglo-Egyptian condominium rule in Sudan. Wau is a culturally, ethnically, and linguistically mixed town. Its residents include peoples of Fertit, Dinka, Luo, and Arab origin. During the recent civil war it was a government-held garrison town, and was the scene of extensive fighting in the spring of 1998. Battles erupted again in the town in the spring of 2007, killing several hundred people, mostly of the Fertit tribe. It is the birthplace of NBA players Luol Deng and Deng Gai and British model Alek Wek. Burr and Collins (1994, pp. 74) describe Wau in these terms:

No one has ever been “at home” in Wau. Situated on the fringe of the Dinka country, it is surrounded by a host of disorganized and diverse peoples . . . It was and remains a town belonging to no single ethnic group, deriving its importance only from its position as a commercial and administrative center . . . Located in the midst of the vast Nilotic plain hundreds of miles from nowhere, it was miserable under the best of circumstances . . .

Demographics

References

• Burr, J.M. and Collins, R.O. (1994) Requiem for the Sudan: War, Drought and Disaster Relief on the Nile. Westview Press, Boulder, CO, USA.
• Human Rights Watch (1999) Famine in Sudan, 1998: The Human Rights Causes. http://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/sudan/

Coordinates: 7°42′N, 27°59′E