West Nile: A Virus Or A Place?

Okay, I’m going to ask you to do a quick exercise just now. Open a new tab in your browser and set Google to search for images. Now type in the words “West Nile” and hit the search button. What do you  see? Lots of images of mosquitoes and stuff to do with the West Nile Virus, right?

Believe it or not, West Nile is actually the name of a beautiful part of Uganda nestled between the ranges that make up the northernmost tip of the western arm of The Great East African Rift Valley and the River Nile basin; it is an amazing mix of highlands, ridges and golden brown savanna grasslands stretching out as far as the eye can see during the dry season. So why do we have such an unlucky name? When I tell you it’s a long story, I am not simply making a cliche statement. Buckle up because I’m going to take you on a crash course through a history that spans centuries in a few lines!
From Lado To West Nile
The region that is now called West Nile was once the southernmost part of the Lado Enclave, a territory of Belgian Congo granted to King Leopold II by the British at the Berlin Conference in 1884-85 and this lease would last only until his death. Yes, the people of West Nile were once Congolese! Whatever that means-because for many of us our primary identity still lies in our tribes, that have no respect for borders, not in nationalities that were made up miles away in Berlin. It is even speculated that in earlier times, this region was part of the Turko-Egyptian Ottoman Empire. Anyway, after the death of Leopold in 1909, the Lado Enclave was handed back to Britain “on paper” but on ground this change of the guard did not take effect immediately.

For a period of about a year, the Lado Enclave gained its infamous reputation of being a haven for brigands from Europe & America trying to make a quick fortune from big game hunting- especially elephants for their Ivory. This is about the time that the then recently retired former American president Theodore Roosevelt embarked on his controversial hunting expedition through East & Central Africa in which over 1000 big game were killed-including six of the now almost extinct White Rhinos. There is a place by the Nile in Arua District called Rhino Camp and it is so called because that is where Roosevelt and his team camped after they had felled one of those creatures of which none now exist in West Nile.

Regarding the large number of animals taken, Roosevelt said, ” I can be condemned only if the existence of the National Museum, the American Museum of Natural History, and all similar zoological institutions are to be condemned.” – Wikipedia. Unfortunately, Teddy does make a valid point.

Back to the story, after the Belgians relinquished control of it, West Nile was temporarily handed over to the Sudan Condominium as the southernmost part of the Western Equatoria Province. So the people of West Nile were first Congolese and then Sudanese in a short span of time – heady stuff, ain’t it?

The Sudan Condominium is a territory that was jointly governed by Britain and Egypt – it’s all very complicated, I know. The governer, Chauncy Stigand, then advised his superiors to hand over the southern part of the province, now known as West Nile, to the Uganda Protectorate because he deemed the Lugbara people hostile and ungovernable. So it was an act of governmental good riddance that got us into Uganda. This was formalised in April 1914 and took effect in February 1915. It was to be ten years later in 1925 that any effective colonial control over the local population would take root in the region.

Some of the notable local people of part Nubian ancestry had suggested that the district be called Bahr el Gebel but the first British colonial governer of West Nile, A.E. Weatherhead, insisted on the name West Nile, the region West of the Albert Nile, and it stuck. So how is it even connected to a virus? Apparently, the West Nile Virus was first identified in the region in 1937 and got named so just like Ebola is named after the Ebola River in the DR Congo. Interestingly though, the West Nile Virus has only been experienced as an epidemic in the American state of Texas and not in West Nile. Any Texans okay with renaming it the Texas Virus? Hopefully you can now tell the difference between the place and the virus!