Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
of him from his youth, the outrageous hair of the 1980s, his dubious fashion choices and
oversized shirts; Boston and Lily standing proudly outside his first small business, a shop
selling records; his old ranch in the Congo, where a young Boston - recognisable only by
the smile - stood beside his mother, who looked almost identical to her son. Among them
all there lay a lone photograph of Boston's father. He picked it up between forefinger and
thumb and handed it to me. 'It was months before he went missing,' he said - and I noted
that here, with his family around him, he said 'went missing', whereas, out in the bush, he
had always intimated murder.
Later, once the children had gone to bed, it was time to make my exit. Boston, perhaps
driven by one too many beers, insisted on walking me down the road. 'It's so the great
explorer doesn't get lost!' he exclaimed - but, by the end of the garden, where his security
guard was still fast sleep, he seemed to have forgotten.
'She's worried about the north,' I said, looking back at Lily in the door of the house. 'I
am too, Boston. Look, I
have
to go, but you . . .'
Boston didn't want to hear more. This time, he wasn't smiling when he cut me off:
'There is a month between there and now. A lot can change, Lev.'
Alone, I wended my way down the twisting streets until, at the bottom of the hill, I was
able to find a
boda-boda
to take me back into town. There, I sat up, long into the night,
bickering with the unstable internet connection in the hotel lobby, as I tried to learn more
about what was happening up north, and the challenges we would have to face.
'Listen,' said Boston, stalking across the hotel lobby for the TV buzzing in the corner.
There, he fumbled to turn up the volume. We had spent the morning in the Kisenyi market,
where Boston had commissioned a metalsmith to make him a catapult from smelted car
parts. In the hotel, rap music began to blare out across the lobby, drawing infuriated looks.
'Talentless!' Boston fumed, insisting I watch. 'Can you believe it, Lev?'
'It's rap music, Boston.'
'But
listen
.'
I did. Only two words seemed to emerge from the mix. They were strangely familiar.
'The song is called “Levison Tembula”,' Boston explained. 'Levison the Walker. You
are famous, Lev, but it doesn't stop it being shit.'
We had marked today as another rest day before we followed the shore east to Jinja,
where the true White Nile emerged and began its course due north, but there was to be
precious little resting. Boston had promised to show me the heart of the
real
Africa and it
was with his sardonic grin emblazoned in my thoughts that we hailed a
boda-boda
driver
and headed for the southern bounds of the city.
After several wrong turns, we arrived at a fenced-off section of woodland, which ap-
peared as nondescript as everywhere else outside Kampala's beating heart. Parked up in-
