Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
shores of Lake Tanganyika at Ujiji that drained southwards. Speke reached the lake and named
it Lake Victoria after the British Sovereign in 1858 and told Burton he had found the source,
but Burton was doubtful and did not wish to return to explore further for a river exiting the
lake. Speke returned to England and spilled the beans to Sir Roderick Murchison of the Royal
Geographical Society and claimed the glory for himself despite his promise to wait for Burton,
causing even further animosity between them. Speke organized a second trip to try and find the
outlet and in July 1862 reached the waterfalls below Lake Victoria on the White Nile and
named them the Ripon Falls. Now, five miles below the falls, the Blackstone private equity
firm and Aga Khan Development Network have financed the Bujagali Dam on the White Nile
that produces 250 MW of electricity and supplies half of Uganda's electricity. On his return
down the Nile he met Samuel Baker the famed British adventurer and hunter. Baker was to find
that the White Nile flowed into and out of Lake Albert but Livingstone still believed that the
Nile originated in Lake Bangweulu and flowed north to Lake Tanganyika and then onto the
Nile via Lake Albert. Trying to confirm this he was laid low by malaria and had to retreat to
Ujiji in 1971 to recover. It was here that H. M. Stanley found him, having been sent by the son
of the publisher of the New York Herald, James Bennett, to find him and uttered the words
“Doctor Livingstone, I presume?” Livingstone was to continue his quest but in the swamps
north of Lake Bangweulu in April his attendant saw him kneeling praying at his bed at night but
very ill and the next morning, 1 of May 1873 he was found in the same position, dead. His
attendants buried his heart and viscera and let his body dry in the sun before carrying it to the
coast and for eventual burial at Westminster Abbey. The origin of the White Nile is still in
dispute as far as which is the largest river that feeds Lake Victoria although Stanley did
confirm by walking around the lake that the Ripon Falls are the outflow that feeds the Nile.
Bulawayo:
We touched down at the airport in Bulawayo. The few whites from Zimbabwe we see at the
Nkomo Airport avoid eye contact and don't want to talk or speak only in hushed tones. I ask
why the Joshua Nkomo Airport building looks so new but get no explanation for it not being
used and am only told that it was built many years ago and now it's being refurbished again,
never having opened in the first place. Construction was started in 1988. We are taken to a
building that looks like an old hangar, divided internally by wood sections. The board for
scheduled flights is made of wood and also looks old but has a lovely old wood patina to it;
like an old English wood stock. The flights are listed in an antique lettering system that
welcomes one to the old Africa colonial era. The people and officials are however friendly
and helpful, despite us not having all the required documents, and from the iron beams in the
roof two exotic democratic pigeons look down on the tourists, locals, and officials.
Brent, who was to be our professional hunting (PH) guide, then met us and we drove into the
headquarters for Mazunga in Bulawayo to get the necessary keys and paper work for getting
Bruce's missing luggage and rifle case shipped to our camp, should it arrive. Fortunately, it
did arrive 3 days later, the holdup having been the shipping of the case from Washington. We
never found out if it was shipped via London or directly since we assumed that Hurricane
Irene would delay flights out of Washington to both Johannesburg and probably London.
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