Before I went to visit my uncle in Rwanda, I had read and watched even more documentaries about Africa on TV, but it’s not the same as meeting a lion or an elephant eye to eye in the wilderness. And sitting in front of the TV in Bosnia you will never find out what my uncle has taught me in Africa – the source of the great River Nile is in Bosnia!!! How come? Well, we went to Lake Victoria in Uganda in search of an answer.

All encyclopedias and geography textbooks tell us that it is exactly from that big lake, in fact the second largest in the world, that the River Nile has leaked out. And that is near the town of Jinja which is nowadays a destination for all those weirdoes who risk their lives just to go down gigantic river currentsin rubber boats. And in the same Jinja, for those who didn’t know, there is a monument to that famous Indian, Mahatma Gandhi, who asked that a part of his ashes from the urn be released into the water. I don’t know if they fulfilled his will from the steel bridges over the river, but I have no words to describe the feeling when you’re standing there, almost touching the roaring and boiling water beneath while water spray keeps bathing you.

My uncle tells me that until recently everyone used to write that here - exactly, where we were standing staring into the mighty water - is the source of the Nile. To be frank, it was known that one of the tributaries to Lake Victoria came all the way from the hills of Burundi. Recently, some explorers discovered an even more distant source – in a forest in Rwanda. My uncle joked about it and added – “How it started, no one will be surprised if soon we claim that the real source of the Nile is in – Bosnia!!” And we are now the first ones to put through this new theory, so that no one can later claim it to be his idea!

To be continued...

Translated by: fra Branimir Mlakić
Edited by: Valerie Kae Ken