Red Nile: The Biography of the World’s Greatest River by Robert Twigger Read Free Book Online Page B

out and can never return. Early man left Eden and found a river that drew him north to the rest of the world. But this river would later encourage agriculture and the plenty required to start trade. Change happens. But Homo sapiens vanquished Homo erectus , neanderthalensis and heidelbergensis before he ever began to trade.
    Naturally there is great controversy over what traits made Homo sapiens the hominid winner. Gift giving is actually more advanced than trade. Chimpanzees and bonobos trade in as much as they gain advantages through exchanging goods and services. Gift giving requires the ability to empathise and imagine what another might want. It is also the start of selflessness. Surely the first stage in being human is when we realise that being connected to others means more than the selfish survival of a lone individual, which is the condition of any animal.
    We no longer live in groups of thirty, nor do we hunt and gather for a living, have babies every four years and walk great distances to find new sources of berry and nut. We are civilised now, thanks to the Nile,yet one of our highest qualities is the one that remains: generosity, gift giving. The ancient Greek historian Herodotus famously wrote that ‘Egypt is the gift of the Nile.’ Perhaps, despite the temptations provided by the Nile, the escape route from Eden, we retain the ability to give.
    6 • River gods
    The baboon, because he cannot see his bald behind, laughs greatly at the defects of others . Sudanese saying
    I was at the ‘other’ source of the White Nile: in Jinja, at the Nile’s exit from Lake Victoria. It was here that Mahatma Gandhi had some of his ashes scattered (as well as in several Indian rivers and a shrine in Los Angeles). That is the magic of the source – Jinja being the generally accepted start of the Nile in travel guides and the like (the whole Kagera thing being too complicated for a fleeting Fodor reference). By some peculiar circularity Gandhi has helped publicise Jinja as a source of the Nile – fame helping fame. In Jinja there is also a Buddhist temple, a mosque and several churches. Religion provides its own narrative about ultimate beginnings, and like calling like perhaps feels at home with other sources that have, over time, achieved mystical qualities. Or at least the power to bewitch.
    But I was here to worship nature rather than investigate religion. I had just been river rafting, a fun thing to do on any river, and here, at the Bujagali Falls, is some of the best rafting around (as well as bungee jumping, quad biking etc).
    Now it gets complicated – all these waterfalls and dams, some of which got renamed when a new regime took over. The gist of it is: originally the Nile flopped out of Lake Victoria over some rock slabs. This was named the Ripon Falls after Lord Ripon, a patron of John Hanning Speke, the first European to see the spectacle. Just below the Ripon Falls were some more – the Owen Falls – and about four miles further on some more: the Bujagali Falls. Actually they are more like wild bouldery river rapids than falls in the Niagara sense of the word. At the Owen Falls they built a dam in the 1950s that flooded the Ripon Falls. There used to be a plaque there commemorating their discovery by Speke. Now it’s under water.
    For many years they have been planning to build another dam which will flood the Bujagali Falls – over which I had just slithered and shot in a sixteen-foot Avon rubber raft. As you read this it will already be too late to do the same thing. Amazingly, the planning has stopped and the building has started. Work on the dam started in late 2011.
    In a way, what with all the religious possibilities in town, it seemed right that I was here to mourn the passing of the Bujagali Falls, which will be submerged by the new dam, some two miles from the Owen Falls dam. Yep, the river hasn’t really started and we’ve already stopped it. Twice.
    So. More submergence. Dams drown things.