Winston Churchill one of Uganda’s early Tourists – 1907
The African Safari of Winston Churchill’s – 1907 African Travels to Uganda
Winston Churchill’s – 1907 African Travels to Uganda – By Ship-Train-Boat-Bicycle-Auto-on Foot to and inside of Uganda. One could say that he was a Tourist with deep insight that put Uganda, the Pearl of Africa for th many that followed. He popularized Uganda as the Pearl of Africa without seeing one of its Chief Attractions-the Mountain Gorillas found in Mgahinga Gorilla Park and Bwindi Impenetrable Forest.
1901 was the year that the long-awaited Uganda Railroad line reached the Port Town of Kisumu along Lake Victoria on the Kenyan side of the Lake. Now the route from Mombasa to Kisumu- a route that took months by foot could be done in days.
Winston Churchill was a 33-year-old member of Parliament in 1907 who had been appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies. Winston Churchill wanted to visit the British Protectorate of Uganda which still unfamiliar Territory at that time resulting Winston Churchill’s – 1907 African Travels to Uganda.
Upon arriving in Mombasa he took the train from Mombasa to Kisumu and then crossed Lake Victoria by Steamer. He visited the then colonial capital of Entebbe and by carriage to Kampala and continuing to Munyonyo Port where he took the steamer William McKinnon the town of Jinja along Lake Victoria and the River Nile.
In those days there was no Owen’s Dam on the Nile but Ripon Falls where he left the modern transport of railway and steamboats and he his party trekked on foot for three days with his party to bypass the Nile Rapids afterward they continued by Ugandan Canoes to Lake Kyoga, a 5-day voyage. From there he took a bicycle to the town of Masindi in northern Uganda, a trip that took five days. The Journey today by Vehicle from Jinja to Masindi and on to Murchison Falls – today that total journey from Jinja to Murchison Falls would be a mere 7 hours but then it took Winston Churchill 13 days to reach the most powerful waterfall in the world.
Of those various means of transport, Winston Churchill wrote about the Bicycle “The best of all methods of progression in Central Africa is the bicycle…Had I known before coming to Uganda the advantages which this method presents…I should have been able to travel far more widely through the country. Instead of merely journeying from one Great Lake to the other. I could, within the same limits of time have explored the fertile and populous plateau of Toro, descended the beautiful valley of Semliki, and traversed the Albert Lake from to end, and skirted the slopes of Rwenzori. If youth but knew…! W.S. Churchill-My African Journey 1908.
Uganda so impressed Winston Churchill during his 1907 Safari that he wrote a book about it published in 1908 which he called “My African Journey” and a journey (safari) but not extravagant in nature, it was Spartan in nature compared to others before and after him.
The resulting “My African Journey” book was Uganda’s first major media promotion about the wonders of Uganda. In it he proclaimed
“For magnificence, for variety of form and color, for profusion of brilliant life — bird, insect, reptile, beast — for vast scale — Uganda is truly “the Pearl of Africa.”
The Kingdom of Uganda is a fairy tale. The scenery is different, the climate is different and most of all, the people are different from anything elsewhere to be seen in the whole range of Africa….what message I bring back….concentrate on Uganda.
Uganda is from end to end a ‘beautiful garden’ where ‘staple food’ of the people grows almost without labour. Does it not sound like a paradise on earth? It is the Pearl of Africa.”
The path along Murchison Falls that many take up to the top of the falls after disembarking from a boat, Winston Churchill took down and continued by boat along the Nile through Uganda into Sudan to Khartoum, however it was Uganda that he fell in love with and most visitors to Uganda still do…from the Pearl of Africa…jon
“My African Journey” by Winston Churchill – though published in 1908 about Winston Churchill’s journey to Uganda – the Pearl of Africa in 1907 still makes great reading in the 21st Century.
For one thing, you will be grateful that your journey (safari in Uganda) is not as arduous as his was in 1907 – you can traverse the Pearl of Africa a lot quicker than it Winston Churchill.
You can still take a tented Safari as he did in Uganda but with a lot more comfort from moderate to luxury and I am sure the food will be a lot better today than it was in 1907.
The book “Winston Churchill’s – 1907 African Travels to Uganda” gives you historical insight and background to Uganda and its relationship as a protectorate rather than a colony to Britain and you can still find it on Amazon.com in the 21st Century.