Nile quest a source of grim tales
In November 1861, one year after leaving the port of Zanzibar on the east coast of Africa, John Hanning Speke and James Augustus Grant marched into what is modern day Uganda.
Their goal was to find the source of the White Nile. Over 90 per cent of their 150 porters had deserted; both men were exhausted after their 1300km trek and emaciated by bouts of pneumonia and malaria.
This part of Africa was divided into three kingdoms; Kuragwe in the south, Buganda in the centre and Bunyoro in the north. Speke and Grant, although seasoned African explorers, were little prepared for the culture shock they were about to experience in Buganda.
Approaching from the south they first entered Karagwe. The king, Rumanika, was a large, hospitable man who welcomed the two men and treated them well. However, Rumanika had his eccentricities. He had a penchant for large women and had a harem of wives who were so fat they could barely stand. His wives were force-fed a diet of goat’s milk in prodigious quantities to ensure they maintained the required royal dimensions.
After a month, Speke continued alone to Buganda – Grant had a dreadful sore on his leg and was unable to walk. En route, Speke once again saw the huge inland sea, Lake Victoria (he had first seen the lake on an 1858 expedition); this time he observed a river exiting the lake which he was sure was the Nile.
Buganda was the most sophisticated of the three kingdoms. It had beautiful conically shaped houses made from tightly woven reeds. The Bugandans had drums, harps and trumpets and were required to wash their hands before eating. But the Bugandan culture had a dark underbelly. King Mutesa had absolute power and was unbelievably cruel. Author Alan Moorehead, in his 1960 book The White Nile based on Speke’s diary, writes, ‘‘hardly a day went by without some victim being executed at his (Mutesa’s) command, this was done wilfully, casually, almost a kind of game’’.
Any minor breach of tribal etiquette was punished. The victim would be dragged away screaming and either tortured (usually by being burned alive) or mutilated. Speke witnessed numerous decapitations.
When Mutesa walked ‘‘he affected an extraordinary stiff-legged strut which was meant to imitate the gait of a lion’’. If he chose to sit whilst strolling, a page would automatically crouch on his hands and knees to be used as a temporary chair.
Keen to leave this horror scene, Speke foolishly offered Mutesa guns as a gift. The king handed a gun to a boy and commanded him to test it by shooting dead one of the warriors. The command was promptly obeyed.
Some anthropologists argue that in this isolated society, unless the ruler surrounded himself with an atmosphere of superstition, dread and awe, he would not last long. Mutesa on becoming king had 60 of his opponents burned alive, an act regarded as prudent and normal in Bugandan culture.
Three months later, Grant’s leg had healed and he arrived in Buganda. After six more weeks, Mutesa released the two men to proceed north to Bunyoro. This was the kingdom of the more benign King Kamrasi who, after securing the mandatory tribute, allowed the explorers access to his land.
On February 13, 1863, two years and five months after leaving Zanzibar, Speke and Grant marched into the Nile settlement of Gondokoro. From there they were transported by boat, 4100km north to Cairo. On his return to London, Speke declared that Lake Victoria was the source of the Nile, but lack of evidence meant he could not convince the Royal Geographic Society or his arch rival, Richard Burton.
On September 15, 1864, the eve of a hugely anticipated public debate with Burton, Speke died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound whilst hunting on a nearby estate. It was never established whether this was an accident or suicide.
Speke was correct in that Lake Victoria was the main source of the Nile, but it wasn’t until 1937 that the actual source of the White Nile was traced to a stream at the base of Mount Kikizi in Burundi.