Take me to Rwenzori

William Stanley, the great grandson of explorer Henry Morton Stanley, recently trekked to the top of Mt. Stanley and proposed to his girlfriend. Rodney Muhumuza met the duo...

Between 1887 and 1888, the British-American explorer Henry Morton Stanley embarked on his last expedition to relieve Emin Pasha, the Equatorial Province governor who had been cut off by the Mahdist revolt in Sudan. As head of the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition, a mission funded essentially by the Royal Geographical Society, Stanley (born John Rowlands in 1841) found himself traversing previously uncharted terrain in the Ituri rain forest. Stanley, according to the BBC history archives, "found" the Rwenzori range, effectively becoming the first European to reach (and map) the area. Also known in the Congo as Bula Matari (Breaker of Rocks), Stanley returned to Europe with the credentials of a hero, a former journalist who had conquered barriers and demystified Africa.

On February 3, over a century since the death in 1904 of the legendary explorer, another Stanley was here to acquaint himself with his great grandfather's conquests. But William Stanley did not come to navigate lakes or to break rocks. He was a man on a different mission; a man in love. Along with his fiancée, Stanley took to the Rwenzoris and there, he trekked to the top of Mountain Stanley, the highest of the three that make up the Rwenzoris. And once he was there, the young man accomplished what had been on his mind since he took the flight from London to Entebbe: he proposed to his girlfriend Rebecca Unwin and she accepted to marry him.

At the Speke Hotel veranda, where I found the two lovebirds relaxing, Stanley was helping himself to some beer and Rebecca, who had never been to Africa before, was chatting with a local travel agent. As love birds, it must be said, they never gave away too much save for occasional glances in each other's eyes. There had to be a tip, and it came from a colleague seated nearby who motioned to me, "That's the 'Speke' guy, and that's his fiancée."

I had been misinformed that a direct descendant of John Hanning Speke, another of the great European explorers, was in town and would be leaving soon. The young 'Speke', I had been told, was tracing his ancestor's footsteps in the countryside. "So you are the new Speke, a great grandson of John Speke," I offered when we met. Stanley was mortified - judging by his slight grin, and told me plainly, "That's very wrong. I am the great grandson of Henry Morton Stanley."

Stanley IV, as I would have liked to refer to him, spoke with the confidence of a media savvy executive and rarely joked. He, however, struggled to get certain things right. When I asked him about some of the sites he had been to in Uganda, he told me that Kigali National Park was one of them and we had to be sorted out by a third party seated nearby. 'Kigali', it turned out, was his pronunciation of Kibaale. "I came specifically to climb the Rwenzori Mountains, to climb Mountain Stanley," he said. "I love the vegetation, it's amazing to see. There is so much in Uganda that a lot of people don't know about."

But he dismissed any suggestion that his adventurous ways were so much because he wanted to emulate his illustrious ancestor. "I have climbed Moutain Kilimanjaro as well but the Rwenzoris are more challenging," he said. But, he admitted, he found some inspiration from being the great explorer's direct descendant.

"I proposed to her on top of Mt Stanley; we are now engaged," he said excitedly, making no secret of admiration for 'Stanley I'. His expedition to Uganda, which lasted well over a fortnight, saw him visit a handful of protected areas from Kibaale National Park to the Rwenzori Mountain National Park to Lake Mburo National Park. He loved what he saw, as he did, seven years ago when he first visited Uganda. "A lot has changed," he said. "The place is beautiful. But I have been to other parts of Africa and there is more wildlife there. More people go to Kenya or Tanzania."

His father, Stanley said, had also been around Africa and was keeping the family's adventurous trait alive; he has climbed mountains in South America and visited sites in South Africa. He is the only one of three siblings who has been to Africa, and described himself as "adventurous".
While the man from the south west of England does not regard highly Uganda's tourism potential beyond making the Rwenzoris a love zone, he rates the local folks handsomely.
"Ugandans are more friendly, in comparison with the Kenyans or the Tanzanians, because they are not after the money," he said. "I am not complaining." Rebecca agreed without saying it. She came across as a taciturn person, and Stanley must have had that in mind when he allowed me "only two minutes" to put my case to her.