This Bulging River

Sometimes, when you here so much about something, it begins to take on a quality of other-worldliness. Like when you meet a celebrity that you have only ever seen on the screen- to meet them in person is surreal and unsettling in some ways, but in other ways completely natural, like you’ve met already.

That’s what it felt like when I met the Nile.

My first full day in Uganda found me back in the car, this time going to Jinja, the home of the source of the Nile at the mouth of Lake Victoria. The region trumpets this honor on every sign and shop window. The path to the water is lined with souvenir shops, and even on quiet days, like the day we visited, there is a steady stream of visitors, coming to see the source of life for millions of Africans. No one quite knows how the river begins. Yes, it flows out of Lake Victoria, but there is no current in the lake to indicate the egress of millions of gallons of water. Some theorize that there is a spring at the exact place where the Nile begins and that somehow, at the beginning of time, that water flowed north, rather than south into the waiting depths of the lake. However it is that this river exists, though, it is miraculous. Think of all the stories you know about the River Nile. I stared at the fast-flowing waters thinking, “This is the river in which the infant Moses floated in a basket to the home of the Pharaoh.” It is at once ancient and newborn. The waters that depart at Jinja take three months to travel 4000 miles to the Mediterranean Sea. Along the way, it brings water and, therefore, life to millions of people.

And if that isn’t a true blue miracle, I don’t know what one is!