Situated in the far north of Sudan, on the shores of Lake Nasser, Wadi Halfa is a point of entry for those coming in from Egypt. The town that exists now is actually the new Wadi Halfa. The original Wadi Halfa was submerged when the Aswan High Dam created Lake Nasser in 1971. At the time, approximately 50,000 inhabitants of the area were forcibly removed from their lands and relocated to the desert, where many died of malaria and other diseases. A few Wadi Halfans, however, remain along the Nile, the river that built their ancestors’ identities as fishermen and river traders, building new settlements several times and finally settling on the current location when the flooding stopped.
