Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
In the space of a few hundred metres, the forest seemed to alter immeasurably. Coming
down the forested escarpment, we left behind the pines and eucalyptus. As we walked, the
jungle grew more tropical, thick with oversized ferns and vines that wrapped around teak
and mahogany giants.
Amani had nominated himself our leader, though as we progressed I could tell that my
first impression of him hadn't been far off the mark. The difficulty in following a river
from a forest source is that it keeps going underground, or gets hidden by the vegetation,
ferns and thorn bushes that fill the jungle floor. Above us the canopy was so thick that it
was almost impossible to see the sky, and it seemed that we were walking in a perpetual
twilight. On occasion, I could hear where the water trickled. It was this tiny trickle that
would become the greatest river on Earth, the life's blood of civilisations that had risen
and fallen since time immemorial. This elusive trickle gave life to six nations before it met
the sea, but today it proved impossible to follow.
It soon became evident that Amani was not practised at blazing a trail. His occasional
entreaties - 'This way!' 'Here is the river!' - soon proved themselves little better than
wishful thinking.
At my side, Boston silently shook his head. 'All he does is go east,' he muttered. 'He
thinks, if we get out of the forest, he will see the river then. These Rwandans, they're not
jungle people like the Congolese.'
I had known Boston for less than a week, though he came highly recommended by two
friends, Tom Bodkin and Pete Meredith, who had availed themselves of his services in
the past. Pete in particular had spoken highly of Boston's skills; Boston had looked after
the logistics of one of Pete's own expeditions, to make a film about kayaking the Nile's
biggest rapids, a feat never before attempted. What they hadn't told me was that Boston
wasn't really a guide at all. In fact, Boston had never had any formal training in anything,
and I was quickly beginning to understand that he was a jack-of-all-trades wheeler-dealer.
Whatever you wanted Boston to be, that was him.
He was also the most outspoken man I had met in all my travels, and it was evident he
was not going to pull any punches where Amani was concerned.
Ndoole Boston had grown up in eastern Congo, at a time when that country had been
rife with fighting and internal conflict. Boston was proud to come from a royal bloodline.
'My great-grandfather ruled a tribe in the mountains west of Lake Albert,' he had told me,
before adding that, 'He ate men. It was normal then. He was the king, and would eat who-
ever he wanted - men, women, enemies. It was usually enemies - but, if he had a lazy
servant, he'd eat him too.' Across the generations, though, savage cannibalism had given
way to religion and Boston's paternal grandfather, Mwalimu Ndoole Nyanuba, had been a
Pentecostal pastor with his own church in rural Machumbi. Boston's own father had rejec-
ted family tradition again, becoming first a professor of geography who passed his disgust
