Uganda: Pearl of Africa, Source of the Nile and the Last Mountain Gorillas
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Winston Churchill called Uganda the Pearl of Africa, and the description retains its accuracy. The country sits on the equator, lifted to altitudes that moderate the heat, watered by the Great Lakes on its borders — Victoria, Albert, Edward, George — and shaped by the Rwenzori Mountains, the Mountains of the Moon, whose glaciers feed rivers that flow north to become the Nile. The source of the Nile — the point where Lake Victoria's waters begin flowing north — is at Jinja, where you can stand and watch the beginning of one of the world's great rivers.
Approximately half of the world's remaining mountain gorilla population lives in the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest in southwestern Uganda. The other half lives in the Virunga Mountains shared by Congo and Rwanda. Mountain gorillas were driven to near-extinction by habitat loss and hunting before conservation programmes reversed the trend. The population has grown from approximately 620 in 2010 to over 1,000 today — one of conservation's genuine success stories. Permits to trek with gorilla families are strictly limited and expensive; the cost funds both conservation and community development.
Boda-boda culture — the motorcycle taxi network that moves people across Ugandan cities and rural roads — is both the country's primary urban transport system and a significant social institution. The boda-boda drivers know every route in their city, serve as informal information networks, and are central to the economy of urban mobility. The name comes from the phrase border to border, coined when cyclists transported people across the Kenya-Uganda border at Busia.
