Walking the Nile

by Levison Wood

  I’d seen so many wooden bicycles in Uganda that they’d lost their novelty, but Matt brought me down to earth and I realised that what he said was completely true.

  Soon after we met, Boston departed; there was, he told me, a man living in Pakwach who owed him money. This was a tale I had heard in several towns and villages along the way, but with Boston gone, Matt, Jason and I got down to the business of planning and preparation.

  ‘We’re here for six days,’ said Matt, who looked rather out of place with his little glasses and notepad. ‘Don’t worry – we’ll be out of your hair before you reach the border. God, you’re on one hell of an adventure. I wish I could stay longer. How far will that take us?’

  I looked at a map, glaring out of my computer screen. I’d only got paper maps for the most remote areas in South Sudan. Here, like the first sections of the journey, I figured I’d be able to get power from villages and be able to charge my laptop and navigate off that. It had worked well so far.

  ‘One hundred and fifty miles,’ I said, estimating the distance between Pakwach and the town of Adjumani, where they’d be able to catch a ride back to the capital. Looking at their rucksacks, I also knew that they had way too much gear, much of it unnecessary. ‘I know you’ve done this before, but I hope you’ll agree to a porter to carry these loads . . .’ I said, trying to be as diplomatic as possible before the seasoned adventurers.

  Luckily, I wasn’t in the company of fools. ‘Of course,’ said Jason. In spite of his experience, he was more than happy to take advice.

  The night was wearing on, and it had already been a long day for Jason and Matt. As well as their flights, they had driven for seven hours through the fiercest Ugandan heat to reach us – so, before the darkness was absolute, William showed them to their rooms.

  ‘Are we set?’ he asked.

  ‘They’ve got far too much kit,’ I said, ‘but we can sort it in the morning, send half of it on to the end. What about you? All sorted?’

  Boston gave a mysterious mutter and ordered himself a drink. ‘If there’s one thing you should learn in Africa,’ he said, ‘it’s don’t lend money.’ He paused. ‘Lev,’ he went on, ‘could you buy me a drink?’

  In the morning, we spread Matt and Jason’s kit around and began weeding out the bits of apparatus we wouldn’t need: snack bars and super noodles, spare trainers and more. Some of it we would send on to Adjumani, and the rest we would assign to a local porter to carry. One of the lodge staff, a youngster called Innocent, was happy to earn some extra cash by accompanying us north, and for a few Ugandan shillings we were able to buy an old bicycle to use as a two-wheeled packhorse. By the time we had sorted ourselves, it was already 9.30am and the day was rapidly growing hotter. We had lost the good hours, around dawn, when the heat is more bearable – but, with the sun searing overhead, we returned to the heart of Pakwach town and set off.

  The road we followed was around a kilometre west of the river itself. This, Boston explained, was Alur country, though its peoples could still speak many of the Acholi languages that had been the norm around Murchison. The Alur people dominate the border between north-western Uganda and the north-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo – and, of all the kingdoms inside Uganda, only theirs had been unaffected by the ban on traditional monarchies that was enacted in 1966. The first villages we came to were constructed entirely of square adobe huts. In every doorway and pool of shade, the villagers were drinking homemade palm wine with abandon. They called out as we passed, clearly uncertain if what they were seeing was real, or some apparition brought on by their inebriation.

  ‘Why is everybody so . . . drunk?’ ventured Matt, incredulously.

  Boston gave a simple shrug. ‘It is Saturday,’ he declared.

  By midday we had covered ten kilometres, but the effects of the heat were plain to see. Jason, who had been based in the Gambia for some time, was still unaccustomed to heats Boston and I could just about tolerate, and lagged some way behind. Matt followed at even more of a remove, and every time we came to a village or likely resting spot, where the track was dominated by bush and we could take advantage of the shade, we stopped to regroup and rehydrate. According to Boston’s watch, by midday the temperature had reached an intolerable forty nine degrees and, after that, we lurched on in fits and starts. It began to feel as if we were constantly running a relay, beginning together before fragmenting along the paths, and by the late afternoon I knew we couldn’t complete the miles we had planned. We came to a village where the chief permitted us the use of a schoolroom as a camp for the night, and there we squatted under the rotting desks amid piles of notepads and stacks of chairs. Boston set out to replenish our supplies of water, while Matt, Jason and I built a fire in the yard. The kindling we collected was so dry it took no effort to cultivate flames and, soon, we had one of the village chickens butchered and roasting on spits. As children gathered outside the schoolhouse, Boston returned with water and – like tiny cylinders of heaven – cans of Coke with which we could top up our electrolytes. For a moment, it felt like we were in Rwanda again, constantly keeping the children at bay, listening to them dare each other to get our attention.

  In the morning, we made sure we were up well before dawn and, having fuelled ourselves with coffee brewed on a device Matt had brought along – a tiny stove powered by twigs, leaves and whatever other detritus we could find – we were on our way. At first the going was easier than the day before but, when the first rays of sun broke in the east, setting the waters of the river aflame, I knew we were in for another scorching day. Within an hour the temperature had reached its zenith of the day before, and from then on it only climbed. In silence, each contending with it in our own way, we trudged on – and soon we began to space out again, first Jason lagging behind, and then Matt even further behind. After a little way they both committed all of their packs to Innocent’s bicycle, but lightening the load didn’t diminish the heat. After we had completed eleven kilometres, we stopped to rest in the village of Nyakumba to fill up on water. As we stood in the shade of one of the tall adobe huts, the unmistakeable roar of engines could be heard on the other side of the village: motorbikes, scrambling up and down between the houses.

  It was Jason who said it. Matt was off, handing out some of the rice we’d brought along to the village children, and a horde of them were scrambling eagerly for his attention. He seemed to be loving it. ‘We’re going to take one of the bikes,’ he said.

  As I looked at them, I nodded. ‘It makes sense. There’s no reason you have to walk the whole way.’

  Jason nodded. This wasn’t a decision he’d come to on the spur of the moment, but rather one he and Matt had debated that morning as the realities of the walk set in. ‘We’ll take the bikes north to Pawar.’ He paused. ‘We’ll rest up and see you there.’

  What Jason was proposing did make sense and, if I am honest, there was a small part of me relieved – without Matt and Jason, Boston and I would cover the remaining seven kilometres we had planned for the day much sooner. After our water supplies were replenished, we watched Matt and Jason disappear up the road into clouds of dust, riding pillion with the locals they had persuaded to taxi them to our camp.

  Though the road took us up and down a succession of arid hills, Boston and I were able to complete the final stretch of the day in only an hour and a half, and found Matt and Jason making themselves at home in Pawar, where Matt was in deep conversation with the village headman and Jason was taking photographs of the scrub that overlooked the village. Both seemed revived by their restful afternoon, and Matt had already negotiated a campsite with the villagers. As a group, we followed a small game track down to the bank of the river where, thankful for the cool breeze coming in off the water, we pitched tents and opened our ration packs for the night. Soon, the headman – a drunkard with a longbow over his shoulder and a string of children hurrying behind – brought us firewood and three jerry cans filled with purified water. We sated ourselves greedily, and Matt w
as already standing over our fire, warming through the dehydrated ration packs of chilli he had brought with him. After weeks of rice and fish, and whatever other inedible foodstuffs the bush had thrown up, it was a feast beyond my imagining.

  Later, as more and more children flocked out of the village to watch from the edge of our camp, Jason and Matt took photographs of the crowds. Boston and I lay by the banks of the river. The night was curiously silent, the river barely seeming to move. There were no crocodiles or lowing hippo to remind us where we were.

  Before dawn, Matt was awake and brewing porridge on his little twig-burning stove. Jason was refilling the jerry cans while Boston was already in Pawar, locating the headman and the local ranger station. Today we would enter the Ajai Wildlife Reserve, a small conservation area surrounded by seasonally flooded swampland and forested savannah. Ajai had been the traditional home of the endangered white rhino in Uganda for decades, with the species hunted to near-extinction in the 1960s and the survivors all relocated to protect them from poachers. Entering Ajai would mean we would not pass any villages, and water would be more difficult to find. Even with the rangers Boston was procuring to take us into the park, the amount we could carry would be limited. Even more than the days we had just completed, this was going to be tough.

  Matt’s thoughts had evidently been headed in the same direction. As we lined our stomachs with porridge, leaving generous leftovers for the children inching down to camp, he said, ‘I think we’ll only go half way. We’ll treat it the same as yesterday – come into the reserve, then hitch a ride to the next camp.’

  I nodded. ‘How are you feeling?’

  Matt only shrugged. ‘I knew we’d be tired, but I’ve done these treks before. You have to pace yourself. Being tired is to be expected. It’s half the challenge – plus I’ve got a few blisters, which is slowing me down . . .’

  We had planned to walk twelve miles that day, but we would no longer be following a well-beaten track, instead hacking our way through the scrub as we’d done on the way to Murchison Falls. With the going so tough, we spent the early morning looking for porters from Pawar, but the local men seemed too hungover from their night’s excesses – and, in the end, the two rangers Boston had acquired agreed to be our pack animals as well. Moses and Charles were experienced guides and knew the area well, even if they did turn a blind eye to the occasional villager stealing firewood from the park. Moses spoke good English and evidently loved his job. Charles was big and strong – but, sneakily, only picked up the smaller of the bags.

  The first miles of Ajai were dominated by tall, elephant grass savannah, with only a few trees growing up, like islands in a sea of green. All we could see of the Nile was the green papyrus swamp sitting on the eastern horizon. The grass was dense and tall, and we had to hack a way through – but it was not so tall that it could shield us from the worst of the sun. This was going to be another punishing day and every mile was going to be earned in sweat and toil.

  By the time we emerged from the grass to make our way across the remnants of a dried swamp, we had seen so little wildlife that the reserve seemed eerie, sun-baked and dead. In fact, the only game we had seen at all were a few kob, a small sub-Saharan antelope, spooked at our approach. ‘Has it been hunted out?’ I asked the rangers, but Moses and Charles only looked up and pointed to the sun. The animals of Ajai, I understood, were more canny than we were being – they didn’t tolerate this kind of sun when they didn’t have to.

  Though we stopped in every pool of shade we could find, by eleven o’clock the islands of shadow were dwindling rapidly – and soon, with the sun directly overhead, there would be nothing at all. I looked at Boston and saw that his gaze, too, was directed at a line of forest some distance to the west. When he turned to me, a simple nod was all it took for me to be sure of my decision. I turned to Matt and Jason; today, because we had been moving at such a sluggish pace, they had not lagged behind – but their exhaustion was palpable, mirrored in each other’s face. ‘We’re going to head for the shade under those trees.’

  If I had expected them to whoop or cheer, I was mistaken. ‘How are you feeling?’ I asked, as I saw Matt sip from the tube of his camel-bak water bladder.

  ‘I’m fine,’ he said, sweat pouring from his forehead. ‘Just a bit warm today.’

  ‘It’s fucking hot . . . The hottest day we’ve had. Are you sure you’re okay?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Matt nodded. ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Well, let me know if you’re struggling,’ I said. ‘We’ll take it easy.’ I looked at Jason. He, too, was struggling with the heat – and, even though neither of them was carrying a bag, I knew they couldn’t bear more than about two kilometres per hour. As we set off, I resolved to take it steadily and keep an eye on them. Boston, who looked the most sprightly of the group, began trampling down the long grass to make life easier for the rest of us.

  Between us and the tree line, there was about a mile of sun-stricken land. In single file, we set out: Moses at the front, then Boston and me, with Matt and Jason bringing up the rear with Charles. Not for the first time, with all of us cringing from the overhead sun, our trek had the air of a military patrol as we all kept a watchful eye on one another. The Ajai park was wavering in the intense heat.

  Moments later, I heard a call from behind me. I turned, to see Jason.

  ‘Matt feels faint,’ he said. ‘Can we break, for just a few minutes?’

  I nodded. The tree-line was only a hundred and fifty metres away, but those hundred and fifty metres felt like miles.

  I found Matt hunkered down in the elephant grass. He was sipping from the water pack attached to his rucksack, through a thin tube. There was something almost ghostly about his face: pale white and flushed red in equal measure. ‘Are you okay, Matt?’

  He nodded. ‘I’ll be fine. I just need a moment.’

  Boston was at my side. For a time he stared at Matt. Only then did he pull me aside. ‘We shouldn’t linger here, Lev. Not with . . .’ He rolled his eyes to the sun hanging directly overhead. ‘Better rest when we get to the trees. The longer we spend out here . . .’

  Boston didn’t need to finish the sentence, and nor did I need to convince Matt. He was already using Jason to get back to his feet. ‘Are you sure?’ I asked. ‘Have you got enough water?’

  Matt nodded. ‘Plenty,’ he said. ‘The trees aren’t far. Come on, let’s go . . .’

  ‘Well, keep drinking. We can rest just there . . .’

  Together we lurched across the plain, finally entering the relative cool beneath the branches. But we had barely shed the sun when I heard Jason’s cry, turned, and saw Matt face down in the dirt. By the time I reached him, he was trying to pick himself up, only to crumble again. He looked at me, his eyes open wide, with something approaching bewilderment on his face. Then, as we gathered round, stripping him of his trousers, his shirt, fanning him endlessly, anything that might cool him down, his expression changed again: he had come to some moment of epiphany, a simple, chilling realisation. ‘Oh my God,’ he uttered, and I wish I could say it was in disbelief, ‘I’m going to die.’

  Jason knelt at his side. ‘You’re not,’ he said. ‘You’ll be fine,’ he insisted.

  I had seen this before, when I was in Afghanistan. This was heat exhaustion: hyperthermia, the overheating of the body, is just as deadly as hypothermia, but – beyond summer sun-stroke – is barely ever talked about. I had never had a man die on an expedition, not even in my tour of Afghanistan, and this could not be the first. I scrabbled in my pack for my satellite phone and, as Jason arranged Matt’s body into the recovery position, I made my first emergency call.

  In the forest behind me, Jason was feeding Matt water, but there were no longer any words coming from his lips. Now he only made odd, whimpering noises – noises that will remain with me through all of my years. On the phone, I reached our insurance company – but, this deep in the wilderness, their options were limited. I called home, to ask a contact to arrange a
medevac helicopter. I called my old friend, the army doctor Will Charlton, for medical advice. In desperation, I called the Ugandan Civil Aviation Authority – but they didn’t feel able to send a helicopter, not in this great heat, and not with nowhere for it to land.

  ‘We need to cool him, fast,’ I told Jason.

  The river was too far away to submerge him, so we emptied all our canteens into a bowl and used it to cool his head and body. ‘Find a village,’ I told Boston. ‘Go and bring help . . . and more water!’

  Boston needed no other impetus. Taking Charles with him, he hurried back into the sun to follow one of the game trails to the edge of the river. Meanwhile, I turned to Moses. ‘If they send a helicopter, it’ll need somewhere to land,’ I said. ‘Burn a landing zone . . .’

  Moses took off, while Jason and I remained at Matt’s side, sponging him with what little water we had left, fanning him in a vain attempt to cool him down.

  By the time Boston returned with water, half an hour later, Matt’s breathing was ragged and faint. He had not opened his eyes and, though he had tried to make words, they came out as stunted groans.

  I smelt fire and hoped the smoke would attract attention – but, with mounting horror, I realised the smoke wasn’t coming from the elephant grass on the plain. For some reason, Moses had lit the fire on the hill above us – in completely the wrong place. The flames were raging – and, what was worse, the wind was driving it in our direction. Every time I ventured to the treeline, they had intensified.

  We bathed Matt. We sponged water onto his lips. When we thought he was lucid enough to understand, we told him that he was going to be okay, that he would soon be back in New York where the African heat could not touch him, where his wife Jessica and family were waiting. When we could, we helped him tip his head back and drink some of the water – but, by two o’clock, he seemed to have lost the ability to swallow. On the edge of the woodland, I searched the skies for signs of a medevac helicopter and made repeated calls to the aviation authorities and insurance providers – but there was only endless blue above.