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mounds listing in the earth beside the river; the black blood stains where the clergy had
been massacred inside the cathedral; the burnt-out tanks and the smell of death.
Before dawn, I returned to the veranda, to watch the soldiers still gathered in the car
park. I still couldn't shake those images from my mind. Compared to what was happening
in South Sudan, my own expedition was as insignificant as a single raindrop in the storms
that were soon to come. Even if there was a way to go downriver, I knew, now, that it
wasn't worth it. How could I justify putting other people in danger by walking through a
warzone where people - real people - were starving and being killed every day? I wasn't
one of the Nile's first explorers, and this wasn't the 19th century, when it was acceptable
to pay for your own militia and battle your way through spear-wielding tribes and impress
your superiority upon them with a Gatling gun. I'd set out on a mission to discover more
about the River Nile and its people, not simply to prove a point.
For the first time, I understood: I had no place being here. I thought back to the other
conflict areas I'd been in: Afghanistan, Iraq, Kurdistan, Burma, the Caucasus and others.
Of them all, this was undoubtedly the worst. Bor was a place without hope - so devastated,
so lost and so violent that it sent a shiver of horror down my spine. I thought back to Baker,
who had been thwarted by tribal wars in Uganda and took revenge by shooting dozens of
'natives' as he cruised upriver on his barge; I thought of the Romans, who had been driven
back by the impenetrable Sudd; I thought of how Stanley had sacrificed two hundred men
following the flow of the River Congo. In the final moment, I thought of Matt Power, dead
on a Ugandan hillside, never to go back home. Africa seems to take lives without regard
and with impunity. Somewhere in Bor, it was happening even now. I'd seen enough death
in my time to understand that there is just too much to live for, and if there was one place
I didn't want to see my own end, it was South Sudan. The Nile, as far as I was concerned,
could wait. She wasn't going anywhere, and maybe one day I would come back and com-
plete this journey in more peaceful times.
Without fully realising it at first, I had made my decision. A world record simply wasn't
worth getting shot in the back of the head for. In the morning, we would beat the road back
south, following the edge of the Sudd, through the empty carcasses of villages decimated
by war to the relative safety of Juba. No world record, no expedition, was worth the risk
of walking blindly onward.
I lay back in bed, staring at the ceiling, and waited for the dawn's first light.
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