Dan Morrison - The black nile: one mans amazing journey through peace and war on the worlds longest river

Table of Contents

VIKING

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First published in 2010 by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

Copyright Dan Morrison, 2010

All rights reserved

All photographs by the author unless otherwise indicated.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Morrison, Dan.

The black Nile : one mans amazing journey through peace and war on the worlds longest river / Dan Morrison. p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-101-19035-7

1. Nile RiverDescription and travel. 2. Nile River RegionDescription and travel. 3. Nile River RegionSocial conditions. 4. War and societyNile River Region. 5. Morrison, DanTravelNile River. 6. Morrison, DanTravelNile River Region. 7. Canoes and canoeingNile River. I. Title. DT115.M.055092dc22 2010004709

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For Jack and Ena

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author would like to thank Rebecca Friedman, Liz Van Hoose, Peter Maxwell, Judith Omondi, Naguib Amin, Violette Rychlicki, Benjamin Conable, Philip Niall, Maria Golia, Sofia Torres and Lauren Lovelace.

Special thanks to Oona Morrison and to Yossina Lopez Marrero.

PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE

Maria Golia, Cairo: City of Sand

T he deacon grabbed me as I rounded a corner of the covered market near Old Kampala. His wide eyes were intense, wildbereftand they bore into mine as if we two were alone on the damp and teeming walkway, maybe alone on the earth.

Id been searching for a bush hat among the acres of flip-flops and mounds of Chinese denim piled in the stalls of the market district; it was the last item on my list, a broad-brimmed canvas number to deflect the sun that my old blue walking cap would not, and I was about to give up when I was seized by the man in the worn black blazer and ivory shirt. He took my wrist in bony fingers, the knuckles swollen, their skin cracking, and brought his sweating face near to mine.

A stream of weekend shoppers adjusted its course around this new obstruction. A child stopped to stare and was pulled away by her mother. The deacon ignored them, just as he ignored the thunder rolling down from the hills surrounding the capital. Do you, he panted, his pupils and nostrils dilated wide as dimes, believe in Jesus?

Schon Bryan, standing beside me in a sweat-blotched golf shirt and devastated Carhartt work pants, gave a snort and walked to the railing. He lit a filterless Camel, adjusted his $200 sunglasses and looked down into the scrum of buyers and hawkers one level below.

I had seen these Pentecostal preachers gyrating on street corners all over Kampala, usually in the late afternoons. It looked like an exhausting line of work. You know, I told the deacon, twisting slowly away, hoping he would allow my arm to come along for the ride, thats a complicated question, and Im a little busy right now. He increased the pressure on my wrist and raised a Bible over our heads with his left hand, his breath fogging my glasses as the Muslim call to afternoon prayer began to echo from the nearby mosques. Renounce Mohammed, he shouted in his sawdust voice. Renounce the devil, and come now to blessed salvation.

Two womenone wearing a short stretchy neon blue skirt, the other in a longer, more traditional orange-and-black print dress with exaggerated poufs at the shoulderswatched from the doorway of a clinic selling herbal treatments for HIV. Jesus! the woman in the neon skirt called out. I glanced in her direction. Save me, she cried.

I mean no offense, I said, turning back to the deacon. Im just not interested. Ive got something to do, and Ive got to go. He slackened his grip, his pupils and nostrils contracted, and his form shifted ever so slightly from one of madman to man. He gave a short breath and asked in a matter-of-fact tone, What have you to do?

Im looking for a hat.

But what is your purpose here? You are not a missionary. I dont think you are an NGO. That is why the whites come. Why are you here? A woman in a nurses smock opened the clinic door and shouted over the markets clamor, Godfrey! He will see you now. The deacon looked to her and again to me. Why are you here? Tell me your purpose. He dropped my arm and lowered his Bible. It started pouring, and the market grew louder as more people pressed inside to escape the wet. Rain hammered the center skylight and the corrugated steel roof. Tell me. I dont have long.

His simple request struck me in a way his evangelical hysteria had not. I cringed, and almost confessed, Im a hack journalist with something to prove, and Ive brought my best friend to Africa to keep me company while I prove it, but Im not sure he can handle whats to come and Im not sure I can either, and Im terrified were going to get our fingers and lips chopped off in the north, or that well be shot by bandits in southern Sudan, or that well be arrested and beaten for snooping around in Khartoum. I couldnt live with myself if I got Schon killedId have to commit suicide.

Instead I said, Ill tell you, and my posture improved with each word. Im going down the White Nile, the length of the Nile, from Lake Victoria to the Mediterranean. Im going to paddle a boat from Jinja to Lake Kyoga, maybe even as far as Karuma Falls, and then Im going to trek through Murchison Park to Lake Albert, where Ill find a fisherman to take me north to Nimule and into Sudan. From there well follow the river to Juba, where Ill hop a barge through the Sudd marshlandswell fish off the side, Schons a great fishermanand on up to Khartoum. Ill follow the river north from there and visit the Sudanese pyramids and, hopefully, the Merowe Dam, carrying on through Nubia, past Aswan to Cairo, and then finally Rosetta. I figure I can make it in three months.