Travels on a Dirty Planet

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These issues again revealed themselves on my visit to Jinja, a town in Uganda on Lake Victoria that in Churchill's time was thought to be the Nile's source. Churchill wanted to rename the town Ripon Falls, "after the beautiful cascades which lie beneath it, and from whose force its future prosperity will be derived." What was needed, he added, was to build a dam and "let the Nile begin its long and beneficent journey to the sea by leaping through a turbine."

The dam that Churchill foresaw in 1907 was finally built in 1954. On the ride into Jinja, I passed the electric power station that now hums beside it. But the material blessings forecast by Churchill--"the gorge of the Nile crowded with factories and warehouses" and "crowned with long rows of comfortable tropical villas and imposing offices"--have yet to happen.

The place where Africa's longest river emerges from its largest lake should be one of the great scenic spots on earth. But the site is actually a bit disappointing; there seems to be no there there. Because of the dam two miles downriver, Ripon Falls has disappeared beneath the water line, so no one spot stands out as the river's beginning. Gazing down from the tidy park that overlooks the Nile, I watched a flock of long-necked, brilliantly white birds wheel lazily across the river before settling on the branches of a half-submerged tree. On the far bank, swaying in the breeze, were row upon row of rubbery-leafed matoke trees, the banana-like staple of the local diet. Off to my left, Victoria Bay opened into the great lake. Without question, this was a place of uncommon beauty. Yet a feeling of loss was inescapable; what the spot looked like before the coming of industrialization could now only be imagined.

Leaving the park, I stopped to chat with the young man who had sold me my entrance ticket. Neatly dressed, wearing flimsy glasses with black plastic frames, he lounged beneath a tree with a friend, taking refuge from the midday sun. Yes, he nodded, this was a very beautiful place to work, but it sometimes got boring. Spying his newspaper on the ground, I asked why he did not bring a book to read. It was a foolish question, but his answer was polite.

"It is very difficult to obtain books in Uganda," he explained. "Our shops are usually empty. And any book for sale costs a great deal of money."

When I marveled at how lovely this place must have been in its original state, he was again a step ahead of me.

"Yes," he smiled, with a gentleness common among eastern Africans. "But the dam has done much good for us, giving us electricity."

"You trade one for the other," I said.

He beamed with the pleasure of having communicated perfectly across our cultural divide. "Yes! You trade one for the other."

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