Arie Goes to Jinja

I took a day trip to Jinja this past weekend. Jinja is a small town a couple of hours outside Kampala. We were supposed to leave from work at 8 a.m., so I set an alarm, skipped breakfast, and arrived at 7:45. Unsurprisingly, I was the only one there. The next person showed up at about 8, and the bus arrived at 8:30. Our first stop was a hotel so some of the guys could change travelers’ checks, then a supermarket to buy snacks. In Cambodia also, no one would go on even a short road trip without a bag of food. Maybe car breakdowns are common.

We drove for a couple of hours, mostly through farm districts. This photo shows a tea plantation. We passed fields with many other crops, but I couldn’t identify them. From time to time, there would be large, grand buildings on the hills in the distance. We were told that these were universities and the like. There were also what appeared to be giant plantation houses, though I don’t know how to tell which are wealthy peoples’ homes and which are hotels.

As expected, we also passed many homes, generally tiny shacks. We went through a number of small towns, most of which were no more than a single street with a few stores. This little store is typical of what we passed -- note that they’re not necessarily selling Pepsi. My best guess is that companies will paint your store if they can decorate it like this, and it’s the only option for some people, so in most small towns we passed more than half the buildings have new paint jobs of high-intensity bright colorful ads.

When we arrived in Jinja, our first stop was the restaurant where we’d be having lunch, Two Friends. We placed a lunch order and then drove on to Bujagali Falls.

Bujagali Falls is a series of small waterfalls near the base of the Nile River. It’s a big center for “adventure” tourism, including bungee jumping, ATV driving (“quad biking”), and white-water rafting. On the rather long drive to the falls from Jinja, I didn’t see the bungee jumpers, but I saw a group getting trained to drive ATVs.

The falls themselves were pleasant to look at, I guess, in the way that you’d expect waterfalls in the middle of nature to be, and it’s always relaxing to be around flowing water (exceptions: waterboarding and typhoons) but I don’t think they’re anything that special unless you’re going to do some sort of sport on them. The rafters seemed to be having fun, but you have to book in advance and we did not. There were kayakers too, that would have been my choice. I do not think I would have swum, but there were a few locals who, for USH 5000 ($3), will throw themselves in and swim down the falls.

Instead, we took a boat ride. After some bargaining over prices, we piled into a little canoe-like boat with a canopy and an outboard motor and were piloted around the river. Besides a few birds and some rafters, we saw several groups of people doing laundry. As far as I can tell, you do laundry here more or less by sitting around in the area of the clothing, although sometimes you beat the clothing very hard against a rock. The driver led us out of the boat, past some launderers, and up to a spot on a hill opposite a construction site.

The thing about Bujagali Falls is that it won’t be around much longer. The government has been trying to build a large hydroelectric dam here for years, and construction is now underway. In this photo, our boat guide indicates where the dam will go. Once it’s in place, the water level will be twenty or thirty feet higher and there won’t be waterfalls anymore. In this photo, our guide is pointing out where the dam will go.

Of course, when the river rises thirty feet, the land close to the river will be under water. And the land close to that land will become riverfront property. This photo shows a site where an Australian entrepreneur is constructing what will become a riverfront hotel. Upon being told this, one person in our group, a woman from Botswana, remarked, “those white people sure are clever.” As the only white person in the group, I tried to look modest and unclever. We piled back in the boat and returned to the dock.

After the boat ride, we sat around for a while enjoying the view. A funny mix of people comes here; a lot of tourists, but seemingly only small groups -- this isn’t the sort of site where buses come, for some reason. Actually, I haven’t seen busloads of tourists anywhere in Uganda yet. I also enjoyed the view of this giant spider, who was hanging out about three feet from where we were sitting.

Lunchtime. On the drive from Bujagali Falls back to Jinja, we passed a number of houses and stores, mostly decorated with ads, inspirational Christian slogans, etc. On the side of one of them, it said simply “STOP MORNING SEX AFRICA”. I have been puzzling over this for days now and have arrived at no conclusions except that I think we’d all better hope they’re not serious.

Then it was time for lunch. I figured if I’m going to spend the day on the Nile, I’m going to eat fish from the Nile, so I ordered fish tikka. The fish was identified on the menu as tilapia. I asked if it was local and was told that it was Nile perch and that they were the same thing.

I smiled and nodded and ate the tasty fish, but made a mental note to look it up in Wikipedia. And I did. And here’s what I found: The Nile perch is a freshwater fish native to the Nile and the surrounding area (but not Lake Victoria). They can be up to six feet long and weigh more than four hundred pounds. They eat other fish, including other Nile perch.

Interesting, but is it tilapia? It turns out that the term tilapia encompasses three genera (genuses? genies?), not just a single type -- there are more than a hundred species of fish that can be called “tilapia.” Very sneaky, you New York restaurants. The Nile perch is not one of them. There is a type of tilapia called the “Nile tilapia”, but it’s apparently a “trash fish” and the wild ones are not often eaten. So which fish did I eat? I don’t know. Whichever is the tastiest. (In the picture is a home made of a wooden frame with mud walls -- these were very common in the area.)

Incidentally, Europeans stocked Lake Victoria with Nile perch in the 1950s for sport fishing or something tragic like that. Since then, the perch have endangered or destroyed hundreds of native species, including the fish that the locals traditionally use for food (and Nile perch can‘t be prepared using traditional methods because its fat content is too high). There are these giant fish processing plants on the shores of Lake Victoria where the fish are cut up (I assume they are off limits to curious foreigners, but who knows?). The fillets are shipped to first-world nations while the bones and organs stay here, to be made into food for Africans. There’s a story that the planes that fly fish to Russia have to come back anyway, so they carry the only cargo that’s worth shipping here -- weapons -- but I don’t know if that’s true. (This photo is of a river otter. It’s a good one, he’s clearly otting.)

Geopolitics aside, the fish tikka at Two Friends was wonderful. One of the best Indian meals I’ve ever had. Fish perfectly cooked, tender but not raw, and the yogurt sauce was perfectly tangy without being too strong. Compliments to the chef (in fact, we had met him before, and he came out after to check on the meal -- nice guy, great cook).

After lunch, we drove to the source of the Nile River (“Omugga Kiyira” in Luganda). After paying about $50 in entrance fees, we walked past the gift shops and up to a small dock. I walked out on these girders to a little island and sure enough, upriver a ways, there was Lake Victoria. But this wasn’t quite the source of the Nile -- we were actually a little further upriver, in the Napoleon Gulf. If only some enterprising locals with a boat and some lifejackets were prepared to give us a little tour of the river. But were there any?

Suspense-building interlude! This giant spider was lurking on the little island. In fact, he was hiding beside a large rock in the center of the island. Two giant spiders in one day. Hmm. Although it’s hard to get a sense of scale from this photo, take my word for it that the spider was very, very large. Those little blobs stuck in his net? Those are cars.

I watched a few tourists lean on the rock and smile while their photos were taken, but the spider didn’t seem to mind so I didn’t say anything. There weren’t a lot of tourists, incidentally, either here or at Bujagali Falls, even though it was a beautiful Saturday afternoon.

Anyway, of course there were tours. We bargained with the driver a bit and then piled in. Again, a canoe-like boat with little wooden seats, a canopy, and an outboard motor, though it was a bit nicer. Life jackets all around, as before, though our guide didn’t wear one. Again off we went into the river, though this time the motor was a bit more powerful.

Our first stop was this little island in the middle of the Nile, though we didn’t actually stop there because it was disgusting. The middle part is white because the tree above it is the nesting site for a very large number of birds. The island isn’t otherwise interesting, but I think the guides knew their audience -- everyone was amused. Also there were large lizards.

We also saw these guys grilling on the far side of the river. Someone in the group (an evangelical Christian) said that they were practitioners of a traditional religion and were sacrificing an offering to the river, but I thought they were just some dudes having a barbecue. I’m not sure if he was joking.

Then we arrived at the “Zero Point,” which is the exact spot where the Nile begins, in so far as such a thing exists. There was a little island and we disembarked and clambered up some rocks onto a cement block that had been placed there for some reason (I tore my jeans here). In this photo, you can see a large disturbance in the water. Apparently a vast amount of water rises from underground right here, and if our guide is to be believed, it’s mostly this water, not water from Lake Victoria, that creates the Nile. One of the Ugandans said that before the dam was built, when the water level here was much lower, this was a permanent geyser. The guide said that no one knew the source of this water.

OK, so the actual source of the Nile is hotly contested. This spot is traditionally thought of as the source of the Nile, which is probably fair because Lake Victoria is a gigantic lake (and there’s the mysterious underwater supply). But Rwandans argue that there are streams that feed Lake Victoria, the furthest one being from (you’ll never guess) Rwanda, so those are the proper “source of the Nile.” Burundi also claims to be the source of the Nile -- they have one of the streams that feeds Lake Victoria, and it’s the southernmost of the tributaries. Notwithstanding these claims (and the inherent imprecision of the word “source”), I’m going to go with this place since, well, I’ve been there. And because Lake Victoria is really big. And the mysterious underground water supply. Three strikes, Rwanda.

The Nile that emerges in Egypt is fed by two tributaries, the White Nile and the Blue Nile. The Blue Nile, the shorter of the two, begins in Ethiopia (as an Ethiopian on our trip kept reminding us). The Blue Nile provides slightly more than half the water and almost all of the silt. The White Nile is the one that starts here. They meet in Sudan, near Khartoum. There’s a third tributary, the Atbara River, but it only flows after rainstorms. This tributary is called the “White Nile” because it passes through a spot in Sudan called No Lake where it picks up white silt. Down here it’s just water-colored. (“This is No Lake.” “Aww, it’s not so bad.”)

The Nile here was fairly lazy, very deep and very slow (with a few fast currents throughout). It takes three months for water to flow the four thousand miles from this area to the Mediterranean. This water should arrive around mid-January 2009.

Navigating through the Ugandan part of the Nile isn’t difficult. The bit that flows through Sudan and southern Egypt is the difficult part. In Sudan, the Nile flows through six cataracts, which are combinations of waterfalls, shallow water, and rocks that are very difficult to sail through, and then bends around and flows south for a while before turning and resuming course for the Mediterranean. Sudan also has a large wetland area called the Sudd Wetlands that’s difficult to traverse; that’s what stymied the Romans.

Europeans found the source of the Blue Nile fairly early in the Age of Exploration, but no European (who made it into the historical record) saw Lake Victoria until John Hanning Speke, who reached the southern shore in 1858 (says Wikipedia), the northern shore in 1862 (says the Jinja Municipal Council), or the northern shore in 1863 (says Lonely Planet). (Doctor David Livingstone was trying to confirm Speke’s discovery when he ventured into Africa, but he missed and ended up in the Congo instead -- thus it was Henry Stanley that verified the discovery and, on that trip, ran into Livingstone and famously correctly identified him.) The first people to successfully sail the entire Nile, from this spot to the Mediterranean, did so in 2004 (it took them four months).

One of the great mysteries of the Nile is how it defies gravity, flowing from down in Uganda all the way up to the Mediterranean. After having seen the source of the Nile, I think the answer must lie in the mysterious underground water supply. Pressure from this supply must push the water uphill all the way to the Mediterranean. Fascinating. (Kids: This would be a great science fair project. Email me for suggested research avenues.)

This pillar allegedly marks where Speke first saw Lake Victoria; legend has it that when he realized he was seeing the source of the Nile, he stopped on that spot and gazed at the lake for hours. He was also looking at the Rippon Falls, which were submerged in 1947 when Uganda built the Owen Falls Dam. Yeah, some waterfalls would really have livened things up a bit. We didn’t get to walk up and poke the pillar, which surprised me -- maybe it’s on private property or something.

We piled into the boat and made a lazy circle back to the docks. On the way, we saw a river otter and a man fishing in a traditional way. The fisherman is using a line rather than a net because the river is very deep; our guide said that it was twenty meters deep on this side and forty toward the middle. The otter photo is above because I didn’t have a better place for it.

Then we went to a memorial to Ghandi. A while back, his ashes were divided and scattered in rivers throughout the world; some were taken here. Our guide told us that the traditional Indian funeral rite involves cremation and then the scattering of the ashes into a river. But African nations generally wouldn’t allow ashes in the rivers, so the bodies of Indians who died in Africa were sent to India. Then Ghandi visited South Africa and convinced them of the importance of the rite, and since then, all of Africa has allowed it. In gratitude, Ghandi requested that when he died, some of his ashes be scattered in the longest river in Africa -- the Nile. Apocryphal? Probably (since when do other countries follow South Africa‘s lead?), but a good story.

Incidentally, I should say a word about our transport. This is a minibus, it’s how most people get around most of the time (when they’re not on motorcycles). They’re typically crammed with people, and I saw one with chickens on top (photo later). They’re dangerous. Most roads, even major highways, have one lane for each direction. There’s a lot of very slow traffic (overloaded trucks, guys on bikes, etc.), so minibuses often pass using the oncoming lane. And the drivers are not generally very careful.

This is what happens to a minibus when it tries to overtake and there’s a truck coming and it can’t get out of the oncoming lane in time. By the time we passed the scene, all the people (bodies) in the van were gone, but this wreck and the truck were still there. A tow truck was just arriving, and this crowd of people had assembled. (Fortunately for me, foreigners generally ride in regular buses, which are slower and much safer.)

A few minutes later, we were pulled over by some cops with a radar detector. Apparently we were going 92 in a 60, though that’s kilometers -- roughly 60 m.p.h. in a 40 zone. And our driver had no license. The police informed him that a cop would ride with us to the nearest town, where they would arrest him and impound the vehicle. Then someone else got out and explained that we were foreigners (I was sitting in the back, or else he might have guessed) and had no idea that there were such strange Ugandan concepts as speed limits and licenses. The cop immediately agreed to let us go with no warning, and we were on our way. Another hour and we were home.

So ended my first day trip. I learned a lot -- like the source of the Nile is slightly easier to reach than it used to be, Nile perch are not tilapia, and never ride in a minibus on a Ugandan highway under any circumstances. Overall, an excellent day.