Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Boston's face was set rigid. I could tell he was about to explode, but I looked at him and
we let it pass. Now was not the time for yet another argument about the true source of the
Nile. I would leave that to be squabbled over by the ghosts of Burton and Speke. I was
only here to keep on with our walk.
In the morning we stood outside Kasansero, on a hill overlooking the small landing site,
where fishermen were already bringing in their catches of the night. The graveyard we
stood in was simple and unadorned. Here was another reminder that the river we had been
walking along connected Africa - beneath our feet was yet another mass grave housing the
remains of thousands of victims of the Rwandan genocide. There is a man still living in
Kasansero who personally buried more than two thousand bodies here. In May 1994, the
first bloated corpses of those Tutsis who had been cast into the river and not been eaten by
crocodiles had begun to reach Lake Victoria. If ever there was any doubt that the river that
emerged from the lake at Jinja was the same one that entered it just south of Kasansero,
here was the most grisly evidence: when the bodies entered the lake in the south they drif-
ted north on the current, forming a gruesome trail of some ten thousand corpses across the
lake and proving that the water that begins in Rwanda is the very same that leaves the lake
and becomes the mighty Nile herself.
There are other gravesites outside Kasansero, and as we tramped back into the landing
site to reach the shore I was reminded of the town's most nefarious claim to fame. Kas-
ansero, Matthias had told us, is reputed to be the place from which the AIDS virus first
spread around the world.
'Perhaps it spread from here,' said Boston, keen to play devil's advocate as ever, 'but
it came from the Congo. It was a trial on polio by some scientists that went wrong.' He
chuckled hysterically. 'We all thought you whites were out to kill us.'
This seemed a strange moment for Boston to return to his usual theme of Congolese su-
premacy, but before I could chip in Matthias had other ideas.
'It came from Tanzania,' he said. 'Prostitutes. Who knows where they got it from? Eith-
er way, this is where it started spreading.'
We had come back into Kasansero now. Some estimates put the percentage of people
infected with HIV here at as high as seventy per cent, and one of the first buildings we
passed was the settlement's AIDS orphanage, where children watched us from the doors.
'These fishermen just thought it was malaria,' Matthias went on, 'or flu. Pretty soon, they
all got it and sent it back to their families. It wasn't long before it reached Kampala.'
Thirty years ago, the world had not heard of HIV or AIDS, but in Kasansero people had
started falling ill, and nobody knew the cause. The people here called the disease 'slim'
because of the shocking weight loss most sufferers experienced before dying. Hundreds
died as the infection first took grip, and the deaths haven't stopped since.
