by Levison Wood
Mama Fina was waiting for us in the mouth of the cavern. As the fog around her parted, I saw urns and pottery chalices arranged in delicate piles. Mama Fina was enormous. As she approached, she waddled like one of the ducks out on the lake. She was wearing an ill-fitting traditional dress, the bottom hem heavy with dirt, and her deep black eyes exuded what I took for a keenly focused greed. Her black hair was cropped close to her scalp and, on each of her fat fingers, huge jewels sat in rings. I was about to introduce myself when she opened her mouth and hollered four belligerent words.
‘Take off your shoes!’
Boston looked to me. Half of him had the air of a naughty schoolboy, but the other half was distinctly unimpressed.
Once we had taken off our shoes, Mama Fina’s hand shot out and clutched me by the wrist. ‘You have kept me waiting,’ she breathed and, barely concealing her anger, dragged me across the sand to one of the driftwood shrines.
‘Don’t worry, Lev. She is only going to bless you.’
Curiosity was driving me but I suspected I could not have backed out, even if I had wanted. We began by kneeling at a rock covered in a white sheet. This, Mama Fina explained, was a shrine to the gods of the water, and it was here that she would ask them to protect me from the evils of the river and the crocodiles who called it home. In a torrent of words I could hardly understand, she instructed me to pour water upon the ground nine times, and then to spit on the goat’s head a further nine. As I dredged up what saliva I had, my eyes locked with Boston, who only nodded – whether to compel me to go on, or in amusement, I didn’t quite know.
Afterwards, Mama Fina dragged me to an identical shrine. ‘This,’ she declared, ‘is the shrine to the gods of white men.’ She seemed to believe I would feel most comfortable here, but I was not sure how I felt, kneeling at this shrine. Again, I lifted a three-headed vessel, drew up water from the lake, and proceeded to pour it over the shrine.
‘Now,’ Mama Fina began, ‘take off your clothes.’
I looked at Boston and saw, in his eyes, that he knew this had been coming.
‘My clothes?’
‘Do it, Lev,’ said Boston. ‘It is better not to argue.’
With Boston’s eyes on my back and Mama Fina’s implacable glare on my front, I began to disrobe. I can’t say what compelled me to do it – certainly not belief in the gods of white men, nor in Mama Fina’s magic. Perhaps just a morbid curiosity at what was about to happen. Once I was stripped down to my underpants, Mama Fina directed me to the water. I was, it appeared, about to have a bath.
At Mama Fina’s instructions, I stepped into the lake but, before I had gone a single stride, she summoned me back.
‘What?’ I asked. Mama Fina was simply pointing at the poor goat. It appeared he was going to have a bath with me.
Tugging on the goat’s leash, I dragged him into the water. He wasn’t impressed. Only an hour ago he had been happily wandering through the shanties, chewing on whatever grasses he could find. Now, he was part of a ritual to some intangible gods. I muttered an apology under my breath and, hearing Mama Fina bark behind me, sank to my knees.
For a moment Mama Fina’s enormous body loomed above. Then, she set to work. It took me a moment to realise what she was doing. Hunkered over me, she was beginning to scrub my back with tea leaves and the filthy, tepid water of the lake. The scrubbing intensified and, in the corner of my eye, I could see Boston beaming from the shore. Then, as suddenly as it began, it relented. I heard the splashing that told me Mama Fina was retreating through the lake. Turning to follow, I realised, too late, that she had only been going to the shore to pick something up.
I was about to discover what the five litres of milk she had demanded we bring were for. She was already bringing it up above my head. Seconds later, the whole five litres cascaded around me, in all its freezing glory. Gasping for air, I reeled back – and, when I could finally rub the milk from my eyes, I saw Mama Fina’s face open in a wry chuckle.
‘The ceremony is over,’ she declared, and promptly tramped back to the shore of the lake.
On the beach I was presented with a spear and badly carved shield for my protection, charms I was entitled to as one of the blessed. Boston, I was later to learn, had given her 258,000 Ugandan shillings for her services today. That was the equivalent of around £60. Not bad work if you could get it, I thought.
‘That was her magic?’ I asked as we watched her waddle away across the beach, to where the black Land Cruiser was waiting. The goat tried to resist being pulled behind her, but his attempts came to nothing; he was, I guessed, about to become somebody’s lunch.
‘Do you feel blessed?’ asked Boston.
If this had happened at home, I might have felt violated. ‘Perhaps just a little . . . bewildered.’
But our display in the water hadn’t even drawn the attention of the onlookers from the beach. To them, it had just been another blessing among many: an ordinary day. Uganda, I had seen, was rife with magicians like Mama Fina. At the roadsides we had passed posters and flags advertising their dubious services: remedies for malaria, for syphilis, even for AIDS; help with finding lost property and lost lovers. In the back pages of the newspapers there was more of the same: Dr Kamaagagi was everywhere, selling his services as a spiritual specialist in erectile dysfunction.
‘If you want,’ said Boston, ‘I can take you to Owino. It is a market, in the centre of Kampala. There you can buy almost any fetish in the world. Bones, animal skins, snake poison, toads and cats. Masks and potions, herbs and trinkets, little bags of powder. You can get it all, Lev.’ He stopped. ‘Do you want to grow your penis by six inches?’
I stammered in reply.
‘They can do anything for you, these magicians.’
KINGDOMS OF THE LAKES
Jinja and Northwards, February 2014
A week in the bustling suburbs of Kampala seemed to pass by with alarming speed, but Sunday was our final night before we walked east, along the northern shore of the lake. In the morning, on 2 February, we restored ourselves with a morning coffee at the Speke Café, and then resumed our long trek.
It was two hard days’ walk from Kampala to the river town of Jinja, following the main highway through the Mabira Forest, dodging trucks laden with logs that Boston was sure had been felled illegally. Sometimes, when the road was quiet, all that could be heard was the chattering of colobus monkeys or the occasional dog-like bark of a baboon in the surrounding jungle.
Jinja appeared as a vision of such incredible relief that I was almost too exhausted to notice the view. For all the arguments about the true source of the river, Jinja presented the first stretch of river that was incontestably the Nile; it was at this point that the river took on its moniker and began its journey due north. I’m sure a lot of Ugandans would have argued that I shouldn’t have wasted my time with the previous seven hundred miles, but getting to the hillside overlooking the point Speke had famously declared the ‘source’ was more than worth the perambulation.
Speke set foot on the grassy hill overlooking the point at which the river pours out of the lake on 28 July 1862. Clad in a tweed shooting jacket and sporting an enormous beard, he had waited for this moment all his life. Two years previously, he had looked out upon this same lake from the south, as his companion Richard Burton lay ill with fever, and declared that it was the fabled source of the Nile. It was to begin a conflict that lasted until the end of his life. Speke and Burton returned from that expedition separately, Speke going back to England whilst Burton rested in Arabia. According to Burton, the pair had made a gentleman’s agreement that Speke would not make any announcements until Burton had made it home safely and they could share the glory. Speke, however, went the very next day to the Royal Geographical Society and declared that he – and he alone – had discovered the source of the Nile. Thus began a rivalry that was to continue for the next five years.
To Burton’s chagrin, the eminent fellows of the RGS hailed Speke a hero and granted him
more funds to return to the Nile and prove the theory by reaching the point at which the river actually exits the lake. So, in 1862, Speke – this time choosing a rather less argumentative walking partner in the form of James Augustus Grant – set off, while Burton wrote books and bitter letters from England. Burton contended that the Nile actually flowed from a number of sources and that Speke was a speculative opportunist, a bad friend – and, worse, a terrible geographer. In many ways, Burton was right. Up to that point, Speke had never actually laid eyes upon the Nile and, until he reached Jinja and saw it for himself, his theory that Lake Victoria was its headwater was pure conjecture.
Nowadays, an ugly red obelisk about fifteen feet tall, made of chipped marble and bearing a grubby plaque, marks the point at which Speke reached Jinja and uttered his famous words – relayed back to London and the eager ears of the RGS by telegraph – ‘The Nile is settled.’
As I glanced out across the bay, I felt, like that rogue Speke must have done, a sense of wondrous magic – and, I must admit, a little pride.
The lake, and the emergent river, didn’t give itself up until the very last moment. This was exactly how I wanted it to be revealed, like a secret being finally uncovered. The view, I knew, had changed since Speke stood here, the landscape redesigned by a great hydroelectric power station and dam, built in the early 1950s to harness the power of the river. Ripon Falls, over which he had looked, had been swallowed up by the dam, but the evidence of a wide, low cascade was still here in outcrops of drowned rocks and a small island on which a single tree flourished. Some iron girders still jutted from rock on the shore – I imagined them to be the detritus left behind by an early attempt to build a jetty. To the south, Lake Victoria opened up, a singular, glistening expanse. The southern horizon was obscured by rows of jagged islands sitting in the lake.
On this western side of the river Boston and I stood alone, but from the other side came distant voices. In the heat haze I could just make out the east bank full of vendors selling trinkets to the tourists.
The news that Speke had indeed ‘confirmed’ Lake Victoria as the source of the Nile infuriated Burton, who had been watching his progress with envy, so much so that he made a public declaration that, since Speke hadn’t actually bothered following the river North to a point at which it had already been explored, then nothing had been proven at all. To settle matters once and for all, a debate was arranged, to be held in Bath on September 15th, 1864, where all the great names in geography and exploration would be assembled and, finally, the rivals could slog it out over maps and oratory.
On the morning of 15 September 1864, Burton and Speke sat at opposite ends of the hall, and among the crowd were some of the most famous people of the day: Roderick Murchison, president of the RGS, and the explorer David Livingstone, who was by then a household name. The crowds were all there for the stars of the show – Burton and Speke, who were to clash that afternoon – but first, as in all Victorian meetings, there were the minutes and parish notices to deal with. Speke, never one for form, excused himself and decided to kill a bit of time by doing a spot of grouse hunting at his cousin’s nearby country estate. A few hours later, just after 2.30pm, a messenger burst into the hall and muttered something into the host Murchison’s ear: Speke was dead. He had been killed in an accidental discharge of his shotgun as he clambered over a style. Murmurs reverberated around the room. Burton’s face went white as a sheet. Some whispered that Burton had perhaps arranged the murder of his rival, others that Speke had committed suicide. Burton, aghast, had never wanted his companion dead – even the Nile wasn’t that important.
After that, Burton was never the same again – he was always to blame himself for the terrible tragedy. For him, Speke had been a worthy subordinate who had let his ego get the better of him. The truth was, to Burton their rivalry was all a game – it was the journey that mattered, not the destination – and friendship counted more than winning. For Speke, it seemed, all that mattered was the Nile – and, in the end, he won. In death, his glory was secured – and Burton would forever after be seen as the quintessential eccentric traveller, whose subordinate had claimed the ultimate prize.
At the bottom of the gardens, Boston and I found a little boat that would take us onto the Nile and motored out to a little island in the centre of the river, at the exact spot where it meets the lake. Here, an entrepreneurial soul had set up a gift shop selling awful T-shirts and key-rings. It was a dilapidated shack, perched on jagged rocks, and its floor was three inches deep in Nile water – but the shopkeeper didn’t care. He seemed to think of it as his own individual kingdom and welcomed us warmly, pointing out all the little souvenirs and keepsakes we could buy. Boston began to peruse the tat, but I just wanted to wade out from the outcrop and stand for a moment on this momentous spot. At the edge of the rocks a crude sign read ‘This is where the river Nile starts its 4,000 mile journey to the north.’ I gazed in that direction, tracking the great river as it cut a gorge through the forested valley.
Boston found me standing there, silently staring into the north.
‘What is wrong, Lev?’
I couldn’t put it into words. Gone was my wonder at standing in the same place as Speke and seeing the same things he had seen, more than 150 years ago. I was, I admitted, beginning to feel something very different. I wouldn’t say it to Boston, but I was suddenly affected by an overwhelming sense of terror. I was going to have to walk every last one of those miles and, across history, they had defeated better men than me.
The town of Jinja began life as a fishing village but its unique place at the mouth of the river made it a melting pot too. For much of Africa’s history, the Nile was a great divider, with different languages and cultures evolving along its eastern and western banks, the water itself a barrier to their intermingling. Jinja, however, was special. Jinja was one of those rare places where the river itself could be crossed, by a natural bridge of rocks at the top of the Ripon Falls – and, because of this unique geography, Jinja naturally attracted traders and migrants. Even the name Jinja is suggestive of a place where men from different worlds could come and find one another; in the languages of the Buganda and Basoga people, who lived on different sides of the river, it means the very same thing: the place of rocks.
The fishing village became a town in 1907, when the British named it an administrative centre, and Lake Victoria first began to be exploited for travel and industry. Now, it is Uganda’s second biggest town, with a population of almost 100,000. Boston and I arrived, dirty and dishevelled, and were thankful of a return to civilisation. Perhaps we had been spoiled by our week in Kampala, but from here the way north would feel increasingly rural and remote. It was time to spoil ourselves one last time.
We met my old friend Pete Meredith at the ‘Nile River Explorers’, a tented campsite and hangout for backpackers, ageing hippies and that most eccentric of breeds – the expatriate. Amid the lush tropical gardens, where vervets screeched incessantly from the tall branches and rock pythons slithered around the banks, long haired gap year types spoke of spiritual enlightenment and kayakers told tales of the ‘Nile Special’, a particularly daunting rapid just downstream. The river was beautiful and shrouded in mist. It was the weekend of the Nile River Festival, an event which saw hundreds of paddlers from around the world descend upon the white water north of Jinja.
‘It’s gonna be wild, bru.’
Pete Meredith’s distinctive South African accent was tinged with excitement. We’d first met some years before, when I had been roaming East Africa in search of adventure. In fact, it was Pete who introduced me to Boston so, in many ways, the reunion was an integral part of my journey. It simply had to happen.
‘I bet you’ve got some stories eh?’ he smiled, but I knew better than to regale this man with any. He’d been there and done it all and there was nothing I could tell him that he didn’t already know. This was a man who’d seen his best friend get eaten by a crocodile. In spite of his laid-back style, this
tall vegetarian rafting guide was as hard as nails. He’d served in the South African Paratroopers and lived in the bush most of his life. Also for most of his life he’d drunk like a fish and partied hard – until recently, when he’d met Leila, a vegan yoga teacher, and together they’d travelled to India in search of enlightenment. Nowadays, they lived in a shipping container in Jinja and spent their time on the river. It was the Nile that brought Pete to Uganda; it was this river that provided the sole meaning of his existence. It isn’t surprising then that, in 2004, he was the man who led the first team to travel its entire length in a raft. He’d also been the source of much help in planning my own expedition.
‘Whatcha gonna do about South Sudan? It’s not good there at the moment, but you’ll have some fun . . .’
By fun, Pete really meant danger. I liked Pete; in spite of his new hippie leanings he was a soldier at heart.
‘You’re in good hands with Boston, but don’t let him rip you off!’
As Pete slapped Boston on the back, Boston’s face broke into an expression of disbelief. ‘Mr Pete, how dare you! You know I would give my life for Lev . . .’
‘Let’s go have some beers,’ Pete said.
In the NRE, it seemed that all the expatriates in Uganda had gathered together. Pete was unusual, having shunned life’s material things to live the life of his choosing – but not as unusual as many of the expats communing here. That’s the thing about ex-pats – they really are often very odd. It was fascinating to see them in their adopted habitat, carefree and wild. As Pete explained, you only had to spend a few minutes speaking to one before you discovered who coveted whose servant, who had slept with whose wife and who had bribed which local chief. In Jinja there were Americans, Dutch, French, South Africans and plenty of Brits – and, like elsewhere in Africa, they ranged from travellers to mercenaries, charity workers to missionaries. Each had their own agenda, whether it was money, oil, God – or simply the opportunity for bragging rights.