Photography 🢒 East Africa 1994-1996
Ripon Falls, Uganda, 1996.
Doesn't look like much, does it? There isn't even a waterfall there any more, since a hydroelectric dam drowned it. Yet this site is the focus of an epic history. It's what John Hanning Speke declared to be the Source of the Nile on his second expedition there in 1862, after previously discovering Lake Victoria in 1858.
His partner on that first expedition, Sir Richard Burton, disagreed vehemently and famously. Their dispute raged on for years after, exciting London society until Speke's questionable death in a hunting accident, the day before he was set to publicly debate Burton. Several years later, Henry Morton Stanley finally proved conclusively that Lake Victoria did flow into the Nile here.
The story has been told many times in many different forms. If you like movies, I recommend "Mountains of the Moon." If you prefer books, "The White Nile," by Alan Moorehead, is a classic.
The entire idea of a single "source of the Nile" looks silly to more modern (or even just sensible) eyes. The Nile has two major branches, one of which originates in Ethiopia, so that this is only the White Nile. Plus, of course, there are myriad other streams flowing into Lake Victoria, and no doubt many of those flow out of other lakes which have yet more streams flowing into them.
