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“Far from the Nile”, close to Delft

A documentary following a band of musicians from Nile countries on tour in the United States offers the opportunity to reflect on the collaboration across cultures and disciplines that students experience at IHE Delft.

“Far from the Nile” (2022), a documentary by Egyptian filmmaker Sherief Elkatsha, follows twelve musicians from seven Nile basin countries (Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan, Kenya, Burundi, and Uganda) on tour in the United States. The ensemble is part of The Nile Project founded in 2011 by Egyptian ethnomusicologist Mina Girgis. Conceived as a platform for dialogue, the initiative seeks to use music to cultivate curiosity and foster conversations about the Nile River across national and cultural boundaries. Its emergence coincided with a period in which the river was increasingly framed as a source of geopolitical tensions, particularly among Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia, following Ethiopia’s launch of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. In this contested scenario, The Nile Project has served as a powerful source of inspiration for collaborative efforts among journalists and researchers from across the Nile basin, including the transnational initiatives in which I have been engaged over the past decade.

The documentary follows the musicians moving deliberately between stage and backstage to reveal the full arc of collaboration. On stage, the musicians’ performance embodies the creative potential of collaborations across different cultures and musical traditions, converging into a rich and new sound. The concerts radiate unity and shared purpose, captivating American audiences who end dancing at the rhythm of their music. Yet, the backstage reveals the challenges and imperfect work required to produce such harmony. Viewers witness the musicians navigating unfamiliar food and biting cold, engaging in extended negotiations over repertoire, roles and musical styles, and asserting the place of their instruments and traditions within the collective sound. Particularly revealing are the small, everyday frictions – disagreements over punctuality, smoking breaks, long car journeys, prayer times, sleeping arrangements, cooking and shared meals – and the structured conversations organized by the The Nile Project team to address these conflicts. By dwelling on these ordinary tensions, the documentary tells a more nuanced story: collaboration is not a seamless performance, but a process continually shaped through dialogue, compromise, and persistence.

In an interview that I recorded for the podcast The Sources of the Nile, Mina Girgis describes the Nile Project rehearsal and performances as a learning experience. Confronted with unfamiliar instruments, different musical scales, styles, and rhythms, the musicians had to learn how to deal with diversity. They were pushed to transform their initial discomfort into creative and appealing artistic expression.

The parallels with the experience of IHE Delft students are striking. Watching together “Far from the Nile” become more than a classroom activity: in that story, the students could read their own journey. The screening gave the opportunity to celebrate and critically reflect on the group works skills learnt and practiced in the Master’s program in Water and Sustainable Development: active listening, making group agreements, giving and receiving constructive feedback. These competences were framed in terms of boundary crossing, namely the capacity to learn and collaborate beyond one’s own disciplinary training, cultural background, or professional context.

Like The Nile project musicians, IHE students navigate multiple crossing to learn how to collaborate in a multicultural and multidisciplinary classroom. Coming from all around the world, they begin by crossing geographic boundaries to move to Delft, where colder weather and unfamiliar (read: tasteless) food mark the first, tangible signs of transition. From there, they get the unique opportunity to learn about water in a multicultural and multidisciplinary classroom. Collaboration unfolds in a shared language, English, that is rarely anyone’s mother tongue. Students described how this can generate moments of misunderstanding or frustration, especially under the pressure of assignment deadlines, and how it demands patience, clarification, and mutual care. Active listening, they reflected, extends beyond words to body language and nonverbal cues, even while recognising that gestures and expressions themselves carry different meanings across cultures.

As they discussed the film, students noticed how viewers laughed at or were moved by different scenes depending on their national, linguistic, or cultural backgrounds — a reminder that interpretation itself is shaped by context. In this way, the documentary did not simply illustrate collaboration; it mirrored the classroom. Music emerged as a powerful metaphor for inter- and transdisciplinary work: distinct voices, instruments, and rhythms negotiating space, sometimes clashing, yet gradually composing something shared and meaningful. Through this lens, students also began to see how artistic practices can open conversations about complex water challenges, like the governance of transboundary rivers, by inviting curiosity, empathy, and dialogue.

For me, this documentary has become more than a teaching resource. It is a reminder of why collaborative learning matters. Each year, I watch students arriving in Delft and carrying different languages, disciplines, and life experiences, and I see how these differences can initially feel like distance. Yet, as with the Nile Project musicians, something shifts when listening deepens, curiosity replaces assumption, and respect guides interaction. Creativity begins to surface not when differences disappear, but when they are acknowledged and carefully woven together. Teaching at IHE Delft, I have learnt that collaboration across culture and disciplines is a craft that we rehearse together — sometimes imperfectly, often patiently — in the hope that, like a well-composed piece of music, it will allow us to respond more thoughtfully and imaginatively to the pressing water challenges we face.

 

 

Emanuele Fantini
Emanuele Fantini
Emanuele Fantini is an Associate Professor of Water Politics and Communication at IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, interested in… Read more

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OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Emanuele Fantini (February 19, 2026). “Far from the Nile”, close to Delft. FLOWs. Retrieved June 13, 2026 from https://doi.org/10.58079/15qih


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