Walking the Nile

by Levison Wood

  ‘Not me,’ said Pete. ‘I’m here for the river. Nothing else.’

  Soon, outside the bar, the mist would burn away, and the Nile would be revealed to the hundreds of kayakers who were about to converge on it for a three-day celebration of daredevilry on the water. I had already heard Jinja spoken about as a ‘black hole’, a kind of vortex that sucked people in and refused to let them go – and the Nile River Festival was part of the reason. It is at the heart of Uganda’s booming tourism sector and, as Pete led Boston and me to its banks, sport lovers and groupies of every nationality were getting ready. Colourful streamers and stalls lined the riverbank, and the sounds of carnival were in the air.

  By the time Boston and I reached the river, the party was already in full swing. Music was blasting out of speakers, beer was being drunk, and at first it seemed that kayaking was the last thing on anybody’s mind. Rather, the festival was about one thing: beer, and how it might be used to celebrate life along the water.

  ‘Check out the Special,’ said Pete, pointing to a seething explosion of foam. On the river, waves cascaded over enormous boulders to create a swirling rapid. It was the famous ‘Nile Special’ – unique because it performs its aquatic marvels 365 days of the year. Suddenly a red flash flipped in the air, spurting out of the rapids like an insignificant bean. It was a paddler – a professional, by the way he landed upside down in the white water but still managed to perform an Eskimo roll and get back up. The crowd cheered and he raised a fist, whooping as he passed by.

  ‘It’ll all be gone soon,’ said Pete with sudden melancholy.

  ‘Gone?’

  ‘Because of the dam. If they build another dam here, like they plan to, none of these rapids will be left and we’ll all be left without jobs. Not just us ex-pats – all the Ugandans who work in tourism too. People come from everywhere to see this water, and the government wants to fuck it up with another dam. It’s a total waste of time. You know, it’ll only generate 180 megawatts – but it’ll destroy twenty eight kilometres of river . . .’

  I’d already seen the Owen Falls Dam at the mouth of Victoria – built in 1954, that was the dam which had submerged Ripon Falls, thus destroying the famed view that Speke would have seen. But at least it created 350 megawatts of energy, and submerged only two kilometres. This new one was a false economy.

  ‘Once it’s gone, it’s gone. The river will never be the same again. Fifty thousand people a year come to Uganda to get wet in these rapids. That’s a lot of cash – but it goes to the locals and not the government. That’s why they want to build this thing. It’s just greed. Think of all the people that will lose their homes.’

  It was to be a story I’d hear over and over. Dams, and the taming of the Nile, seemed to be a constant feature of local politics, not just here in Uganda but further north as well. The Nile, it seemed, was all things to all men. A source of drinking water, food, entertainment, and above all else, money. The Nile is life.

  But we had dallied long enough, first in Kampala and now here, this strange riverside vortex where, it seemed, if you did not leave straight away, you were destined to stay forever – just like Pete. After one last night of relaxation, watching the kayakers out on the river, we woke with raging hangovers and set off for the north.

  ‘Once upon a time, in the Congo,’ said Boston as we were approaching the village of Baale, ‘I met an old man near to the Ituri Forest. He lived just on the edge of the jungle and had got back from a hunting trip with his sons. He was a simple man, and he lived off wild bananas and bush meat. That day, he’d killed a porcupine and a monkey and was about to roast them over an open fire. I’d been walking for a few days and wanted to know how much further there was to go, so I asked him. “Bwana. How far to the other side of the forest?” And the old man laughed. “Son,” he said, with a hand on my shoulder, “I have lived here all my life. I am an old man now and I tell you this. These trees, this forest, it goes on forever. If you walk into the woods and keep going, no-one will ever see you again. You’ll be lost. There is no end.”’

  Three days upriver from Jinja, Boston and I stood in front of what I could only describe as a vision from hell. On one side, the river cut its course north; on the other, what had once been virgin jungle was now a fresh plantation of tree stumps, blackened by fire, the indigenous forest being forced back by flames to make way for farming ground. The Nile was growing broader the longer we walked and, at this point, was almost a mile wide. But, as it became more powerful, so too did the opportunity for harnessing its power grow – not only in the dam we had seen outside Jinja, but in the potential for irrigation and agriculture as well. The river brought farmers here, and farmers meant deforestation. The Nile, we were seeing, brings life – but it also takes it away.

  ‘Did he really believe that, Boston? The old man?’

  Boston scoffed, ‘He thought the forest was endless, and in it the animals and fruit would continue to be there until the end of the world. That’s the problem with Africans, Lev – they don’t see a problem with chopping down the trees, especially if there’s a profit to be made. See, the Mabira Forest we passed through – it looks real, but the truth is it’s like those Hollywood movie sets. It’s a façade. Go into the woods fifty metres and behind the old mahogany and teak trees you’ll find destruction, where the loggers have been. The government does nothing to stop it.’

  It was true. In the Mabira we’d seen five-hundred-year-old trees sawn down at a rate of ten a day by teenagers who’d been paid three dollars by the landlord. This was big money for a poor villager, and with the economics of the industry working like that, what hope was there for convincing local Ugandan people to leave the forests alone? It’s all well and good preaching the wonders of conservation, but not to men with families to feed and roofs to keep over their heads.

  We spent the next days walking north, but the further we went the more apparent the devastation became. Instead of hacking our way through jungle, here we walked through coffee plantations, banana trees and maize fields, all planted amid the shorn trunks, the uprooting of their stumps being prohibitively expensive. Seas of white ash made it seem as if it had been snowing. In the plantations only a few living trees remained, left there deliberately to provide shelter from sun for the farmers. On the third day, instead of baobabs, vines and knotted mahogany, a flat, unrelenting sugar cane plantation stretched for as far as the eye could see. Gently waving in the wind, the twelve foot high sugar cane was eerily silent. Boston and I stopped to survey it. Of all the things we had seen, this, to me, seemed the most atrocious: a ghastly vision of man’s victory against nature, and a visible statement of how consumerism, not conservation, was dictating Africa’s future. Sugar – that sweet crystal craved by millions in the West – had utterly vanquished an ancient biosphere, and in it millions upon millions of creatures, from the smallest chameleon to the most intelligent of primates.

  ‘It makes you sick,’ said Boston as we took off into the cane.

  But it wasn’t sickness I felt. I felt trapped, just like the Africans running this plantation must have felt trapped – by economics, by industry, by the reality of putting food on the table at the end of each night. Africa has to develop, its people have to be empowered to use their natural resources – but it brought a tear to my eye, to think of the forest that had once been here, vanished forever so that we in the West can get fat and rot our teeth.

  We weaved through narrow channels between the stalks, trying to keep to the river, but sometimes the pathways would go off at an angle and we’d have to blaze our own way, causing the only living creatures here – bush rats, mice and rattle snakes – to scuttle off into the cane’s interior. Soon, we began to smell smoke, a tell-tale sign of further deforestation somewhere to the north. Up ahead, a thick column of black smoke was rising into the sky. I judged it to be about two miles distant and, as we wended our way closer, it became difficult to see what was on the other side.

  We emerged from the cane.

&n
bsp; Ahead of us lay mile upon mile of charred bush. This deforestation was fresh and, not far away, it was happening right now. A wall of fire, where scores of men had hacked, chopped and ploughed up the trees into a straight line of ecological debris stretching east and west, blocked the way forward. As Boston and I watched, we could see the march of the flames. They were going north, annihilating everything in their path.

  Boston and I followed the fire north, walking in fresh devastation. Until now, the method by which the forests were cleared for agriculture had been abstract to me, but here it was impossible to ignore. It touched all five of my senses. When the smoke was too strong, tears budded in my eyes and I kept having to knead them so that I could see.

  ‘It’s senseless. This is what makes Africa unique, and they’re killing it.’

  For the first time, Boston wasn’t merely playing devil’s advocate when he disagreed. ‘You whites cut down your forests hundreds of years ago,’ he said. ‘You had your industrial revolution, and when you needed wood you took it. Well, now we need ours. We need to plant crops to feed our children, and plant sugar so you can feed yours whatever shit you feed them.’

  He was angry at me for getting on my high horse and, as we found a way through the fire, I couldn’t blame him. We’d cut down England’s forests to build a navy, to make our own charcoal so that we could power the locomotives and mills that, in their time, had made Britain great – and allowed us to take over the parts of the world through which I was now walking. Why shouldn’t Africa do the same, and finally exploit its own natural resources? Yet, for all his damn logic, even Boston couldn’t hide his sadness at the irreversible change going on around us. Never again would this landscape look the same. The acacias, the birds, the buffalo, the antelope and monkeys – all of that was gone. And even more difficult to swallow was the hypocrisy I felt at bemoaning it, and my inability to conceive of a single answer to what was going on all around me.

  On the other side of the flames, a group of men were busy preparing the ground for the march of the fire. In order to direct it, channels of debris had to be built and others cleared, so that the march of the flames could be controlled. Half-naked, these men turned to watch us arrive. Boston approached to introduce us, but it quickly became apparent that they were half-drunk; a bottle of waragi gin was lying on the ground, by the rim of a deep charcoal pit.

  ‘Five days,’ Boston translated, as the man chattered at him in Bugandan. ‘It took them five days to clear all this.’

  ‘Imagine what they could do in fifty.’

  ‘A man’s got to eat,’ said Boston and, as the other man continued to talk, his eyes were drawn to the charcoal pit. ‘That’s his pay,’ Boston went on. ‘He gets to keep some wood to turn into charcoal, which he can sell at market.’

  I was about to get on my high horse again – these men charged with destroying the ancient forests weren’t even paid to do it? – when I heard a tiny squeaking from somewhere up ahead, where the bush was still thick and green, helplessly awaiting its annihilation. Leaving Boston to talk to this man, I crossed the desolation. Before I had gone two steps inside the acacias I saw a vervet monkey, hunkered down in the undergrowth. Vervets are a small but highly intelligent monkey, with white-grey fur and tiny black faces. Studies have shown them to have almost human characteristics – vervets have been documented suffering from stress, anxiety disorders, and even engaging in social alcohol use – and I had never seen it more closely than in this little monkey. She was a little more than a foot tall and her face was creased in anxiety that looked peculiarly human. In the bush she strained to get a better view of me. I watched her, unable to descry why she was risking the fire and smoke and wasn’t fleeing deeper into the forest like every other animal.

  Then all became apparent. From between the trees, two boys appeared. They were no older than seven or eight and, between them, they were holding what, at first, appeared to be a small rat. Instantly, the vervet set up an alarm call. The language of vervets has been deciphered to have distinct calls for every predator of the forest, but this must have been a very specific call – because, as the boys got closer, I saw what the vervet already knew: the animal in their hands was not a rat at all. It was, in fact, a tiny monkey – a baby, not more than a couple of days old. It was clearly the offspring of the mother fretting in the undergrowth.

  While I had been watching, Boston had come to my side. Apprising himself of the situation, he began to bark at the boys. ‘Give it to her,’ he said, indicating the vervet’s panicked mother, but the boys just looked at him dumbly.

  ‘What do they want with it?’ I asked.

  Behind the boys, an elderly man was appearing from the undergrowth. It seemed he had been watching our little confrontation play out, because he was grinning, with something approaching cunning in his eyes. Boston began to bark at him in Bugandan, before the man gave a sanguine shrug and chattered back.

  ‘He says they take it to market. They can get a good price for bush meat. Then they’ll use that money to buy food for their families.’ Boston stopped. ‘He says – does the white man want to buy it?’

  I looked at the man and had the distinct impression that this was not truly an act of desperation by an impoverished family. This was a tiny movement in a much more complex economy, one that encouraged the impoverished to plunder the forest’s natural resources without thought of the future. Like the drunk villagers channelling fire behind us, this man and his children were pawns put into play by much bigger corporations, whose only responsibility was to their own profit. With a little help, locals like this could be taught how to look after the land and still make a living from it – but that was too much of an effort.

  ‘Don’t buy it off him, Lev. He thinks you’re a weak European. He thinks you’ll pay top dollar, because you’re too soft.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to buy it from him, Boston.’ Instead, I strode towards the boys and, before they could protest, simply lifted the baby vervet from their hands.

  In mine, the vervet was no less frightened. Ignoring their protestations, I strode into the bush, clambering over smouldering embers to where the mother had last been seen. Sure enough, she was still waiting – but, on my approach, she set up the same startled cry as before. To this desperate mother, I was no better than the boys I could sense stealing after me, eager to reclaim their catch.

  Panic took the mother and, before I could get near, she scuttled off to the sanctuary of a bush. Creeping near, I placed the baby vervet on the ground. Behind me, Boston was barking at the boys to go back to the forest, but I remained fixed on the vervets, hoping the mother could be coaxed out of her hiding. Slowly, I beat my own retreat. Only when I was some metres away did the mother emerge from the scrub. Tentatively, she crossed to where her baby was yowling – but still she seemed unsure. After sniffing the baby from a distance, neatly evading its grappling hands, she turned tail again, and disappeared into the undergrowth. Thirty minutes later, the baby was still there, stumbling in circles, and the mother was nowhere to be seen. Who can tell what truly goes on in the minds of animals? But it seemed to me, watching the baby left alone, that the mother was afraid of its new smell, corrupted by the hands of man. She had abandoned it.

  ‘Let’s go,’ muttered Boston, in sadness.

  Over my shoulder, the boys were still lurking – and, even though I knew there were countless other animals being destroyed in the forest today, I did not want this one on my conscience. Ignoring Boston, I crept close and retrieved the vervet. Instantly, she set up a screech – but, moments later, still screeching, she was clinging to my neck in the way she would have done her mother. I stood and turned around. As I did, the boys scuttled off, just as quickly as the vervet’s mother.

  ‘Lev, you’re not serious. She won’t last an hour without . . .’

  ‘Bring me some water, Boston.’

  Boston glared.

  ‘Boston, some water!’

  After I had bathed her head and helped her drink
some water from the cup of my hand, we picked our way back to the river and resumed our trek. Though she clung to me fiercely, it was obvious the stress of the situation had affected the vervet; soon, her screeching had faded to silence, and her head began to loll. Stopping to offer her more water, we picked our way north. At least the fires had not yet reached this part of the river and, for several kilometres, it was possible to believe we were back in Rwanda or Tanzania, where the bush remained wild and, in most areas, unplundered.

  By nightfall we had made it to the village of Baale and, instead of our usual dilapidated shack, we were able to find a guesthouse. There were supplies in the village and, as well as soft fruit, we were able to find fresh milk. Holed up in the guesthouse, I gently roused the vervet and fed her a soft paste mixed from what we had bought. She began to perk up – until, after an hour or so, her screeching started again. Another hour later, her digestive system seemed to be back in working order – and Boston was fuming as he crouched in the corner of the room, making a simple nappy out of torn pieces of an old shirt.

  ‘What will you do with it, Lev?’ he grunted as, with the lights out, we listened to its mewling.

  ‘We’ll find her a home,’ I said. My mother had worked with monkeys in South Africa and I knew there were sanctuaries all over the continent where a tiny thing like this could be reared and, potentially, even reintroduced to the wild.

  ‘When?’ Boston was only angry because, as he tried to sleep, the vervet was clambering all over his face.

  ‘Soon,’ I said. ‘As soon as we can.’

  But, right now, I had to admit I was even glad for the company of somebody – or something – who wouldn’t always be launching into some new tirade at the turning of every mile.