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The Nile Egyptians do not see

This is not the same Nile that Egyptians see

UGANDA | Tuesday, 22 April 2014 | Views [236] | Scholarship Entry

We stopped at meadows of tea leafs, that would be hand-picked and washed in the Nile. That was not the only thing washed in the Nile for there were shoes, clothes, and an inheritance of nile disputes.
The meadow winded in the salience of green-bushed lows and highs. A woman spotted us and also came for a picture. Looking like an epithet of the African woman, she carried her baby in a rucksack on her back, and was almost four months pregnant.
“Women here plant the ground,  raise the children, work, make a living,” Mahmoud Al Ghazzar told us. He was C.E.O of the Kibuli Muslim Hospital in Kampla where the Egyptian surgeons would perform the fistula repairs.
After all this was the purpose of the journey in the first place: to cover a medical missin in Uganda. Many African women there either marry or engage in sexual activity at a young age. Giving birth without the proper care of a midwife or a health worker pushes these women into obstructed labor. Their immature pelvis cannot accommodate the baby's head, thrusting the neighboring vagina and the bladder against the pelvic ball. A hallow opening is then created. Urine then leaks through the abnormal opening. In short, these women wet themselves uncontrollably. Often, these women will get stigmatized in society for smelling of urine.They would be expelled to “fistula villages,” and their roles as breadwinners would be immediately terminated.
The Nile makes wonders in Uganda. Any Egyptian seeing this would say exactly the same thing: The nile water here is different than the one in Egypt.
What was marked as the "source of the nile” is an alluvial-shape formed by two rills pouring into a single stream. Grade four and  five rapids raced. An occasional hedge of rock or flowers would set the water into faster motion. Flowers often block the river and cause serious flooding in villages around. Water hitting rocks would over-brim into strips of water. Damp air distilled nature’s sounds. The chirping of the birds continued all day long.
We then took a boat to Lake Victoria. Lake Victoria is an un-inked water sheet. The water branches into two tributaries: the right one reaches Kenya, and the left connects to the white nile. As the story goes, English explorer, Henry Stanley mounted the surrounding hilltops and noticed the two converging currents. In place of where he stood, a pale pink column is erected.  That is the origin of the nile, though it is disputed.

Tags: 2014 Travel Writing Scholarship - Euro Roadtrip

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