Jinja

Anyone who can walk around an African city for more than a day must have fake lungs. The amount of black fumes, white fumes, and just plain filthy fumes belching at full force from all exhaust pipes can asphyxiate all but a 5-pack a day smoker. And this does not count the dust. Often I cannot see across the street. Nairobi is really bad in the fume department, so I flee on a (incredibly comfortable) bus for a 12-hour ride to Kampala, Uganda. I find no relief from chronic headaches, coughing, and blowing black out of my nose. I leave Kampala for Jinja, an hour back up the road.

Jinja, for readers of African exploration, holds a special place as the source of the Nile. And one of the greatest tales of the 19th century is the competition amongst adventurers and geographers to be the first to find the "spot." No more classic a story may be found as that of Captain Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke. Egos and a fractured friendship caused them to part ways in the middle of one of their expeditions. Speke headed out solo and half-delirious to a spot on Lake Victoria that he conjectured was where the Nile began its journey north. He was right, of course, but never lived to receive his glory, as he died in a shooting accident hours before his presentation before the Royal Geographic Society.

What would Speke think today? A small plaque and monument marks the "spot," but his name is now on a hotel, a street, and various random things around Kampala. There's even a street named after Burton. Both are probably rolling over in their graves to know the headwaters of the Nile are now a headquarters for such "adventurous" pursuits such as white-water rafting and bungee jumping. However, the site of Speke's discovery is a beautiful park--quiet and filled with bird life. Unlike the Blue Nile in Ethiopia, here the water is clean, not muddy. With a visible, strong current, I think the beach ball tossed in here would be the clear winner in reaching Cairo first.

Next stop for me: Murchison Falls

From Lake Victoria the Nile begins its journey.


This neglected plaque marks where John Speke first viewed the source of the Nile.