Over a thousand square miles in size, Lake Tana's old time villages include from the northside clockwise, at 12 o'clock Gogora, 4 o'clock Korata, 5 Bahardar, 6 Zage, 8 Adina. While these villages surround the lake they are located some miles from its shores. Its shore line divides almost unnoticeable into low islands strewn with black lava boulders and overgrown with jungle. A small village named Gish is the source of a river flowing into Lake Tana and thus makes it and the lake (ca. 6000 feet above sea level) the source of the so-called Blue Nile (Big Abbai), which winds its way for 2750 miles to the Mediterranean Sea. In the jungle near the lake were from old times on no native villages. The climate at this altitude can be from very hot changing quickly to cold.
The city of Sennar used to be the capital of an ancient kingdom whose border in the west was Kordofan (not shown), in the east the Red Sea and in the north to almost Egypt. The source of the White Nile in Uganda is the Kagara River flowing into Lake Victoria. The landscape supports tropical trees: acacia trees, lotus, the banyan and the alien eucalyptus trees, palms and water ferns and the shady baobab tree.
Population: Ethiopia 79.935 million; Eritrea 5.006 million; Uganda 29.194 million; Tanzania 40.213 million; Rwanda 9.609 million; Burundi 8.856 million.