Gondokoro

Gondokoro
Island
Gondokoro Location in South Sudan
Coordinates:4°54′26″N31°39′41″E
Country	South Sudan
State	Central Equatoria
County	Juba County
Time zone	UTC+2(CAT)

Gondokoro(formerlyIsmailïa)island is located inCentral Equatoria.The island was a trading-station on the east bank of theWhite NileinSouthern Sudan,1,200 kilometres (750 mi) south ofKhartoum.Its importance lay in the fact that it was within a few kilometres of the limit of navigability of the Nile from Khartoum upstream. From this point the journey south toUgandawas continued overland.

Gondokoroin 1862, photograph byAlexine Tinne

The Austrian Catholic missionaryIgnatius Knoblecherset up a mission there in 1852.It was abandoned in 1859. In 1862, the explorerAlexine Tinnebecame the first person to photograph the town.Gondokoro was the scene for the arrival ofJohn Hanning SpekeandJames Augustus Grantafter their two years and five months long journey through Central Africa from Zanzibar. They arrived exhausted on February 13, 1863, and expected to be met by the British consulJohn Petherickand his rescue party. As Petherick was away hunting in the countryside, the two explorers instead were welcomed bySamuel Bakerand his wifeFlorence Baker,who greeted them with a cup of tea.

In 1874Charles George Gordonseized the town in favor of thekhedivefrom theKhedivate of Egypt,thus ensuring Egypt's rule over all of southern Sudan (then the province ofEquatoria).

A passage fromAlan Moorehead´sThe White Nile(p. 61) describes it thus: "The sportsman Samuel Baker and his wife had come up the Nile to look for them, and there had been others as well who had arrived at Gondokoro on the same mission, three Dutch ladies, the Baroness van Capellan and Mrs and Miss Tinne, but they had been forced to return to Khartoum through sickness.... 'Speke', Baker says, 'appeared the more worn of the two: he was excessively lean, but in reality he was in good tough condition; he had walked the whole way from Zanzibar, never having once ridden during that wearying march. Grant was in honourable rags; his bare knees projecting through the remnants of trousers that were an exhibition of rough industry tailor's work.'"

Theodore Rooseveltpassed through Gondokoro on theSmithsonian–Roosevelt African Expeditionwith his son,Kermit Roosevelt,Edgar Alexander Mearns,Edmund Heller,andJohn Alden Loring.

The site of Gondokoro is near to the modern-day city ofJuba.Other notable nearby settlements includeLadoandRejaf(Rageef).

Other explorers died there, such as Wilhelm von Harnier,Alphonse de Malzac,Alfred Peney and Alexandre Vaudey.

References

• Chisholm, Hugh,ed. (1911)."Gondokoro".Encyclopædia Britannica(11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.