The Black Nile Quotes

“At this point...my body's so worn out that the important stuff just kind of washes past me. But I'll tell you what. I'll never look at home the same way again. I'll never look at education the same way again. That's what's been missing here, the whole way, from Kampala to Juba. It's education. How are you supposed to want something if you've never seen it? And we totally take that for granted. I do, anyway. So, yeah, let's give it another day, but not much more than that. 'Cause I'm tired.”
― dan morrison, The Black Nile: One Man's Amazing Journey Through Peace and War on the World's Longest River

“We were approaching the Sudd. For thousands of years this giant swamp—more than fifty thousand square miles, as big as England—had repelled invaders from the lands to the north. The British explorer Samuel Baker described it as “a vast sea of papyrus ferns and rotting vegetation, and in that fetid heat there is a spawning tropical life that can hardly have altered very much since the beginning of the world.” In 61 AD the Roman emperor Nero, who controlled Egypt, dispatched troops up the river to find the source of the Nile. They returned with reports of “immense marshes” that were too dense for all but the smallest of one-man canoes. It wasn’t until eighteen hundred years later that a Turkish naval captain, operating under orders from the Egyptian ruler Mohammed Ali, was able to penetrate the swamp, reaching as far as Gondokoro. Slaves and ivory were soon flowing north on the Nile. This was the beginning of what Dinka lore calls the time when “the world was spoiled.”
― Dan Morrison, The Black Nile: One Man's Amazing Journey Through Peace and War on the World's Longest River

“I've learned it's always easier to ask forgiveness than to ask permission.”
― Dan Morrison, The Black Nile: One Man's Amazing Journey Through Peace and War on the World's Longest River

“Ali had had four wives and sixteen children, not counting the six who died as youngsters. "I'm so sorry," I said, wincing at the magnitude of his loss.

"It was a long time ago," he said, puzzled by my concern. "Are you married?" he asked. "How long?"

Six years, no children, I told him, adding, "But that will probably change next year."

"How do you know?"

"What?"

"How do you know it will change? It is on God's hands."

"Well, some practices will start and others will stop," I said.

He gasped. "It's wrong. You are killing the eggs, the sperm."

"You know," I said, "the female body ejects its eggs every month."

"Yes," he said, gripping the table's edge, "but the sperm! They must move freely. You mustn't hold them back. It's murder!”
― Dan Morrison, The Black Nile: One Man's Amazing Journey Through Peace and War on the World's Longest River

“Well, why do people take on one religion or another? ... It's usually because someone tells 'em to."

It made sense. The Philippines didn't become Catholic through the gentle persuasion of the Word. And most African Americans were Protestants because it was the religion of the people who'd enslaved their ancestors.”
― Dan Morrison, The Black Nile: One Man's Amazing Journey Through Peace and War on the World's Longest River

“It was a paradox that would endure over next thousand miles: People were cleanest in the dirtiest of places.”
― Dan Morrison, The Black Nile: One Man's Amazing Journey Through Peace and War on the World's Longest River

“They do so have a choice... Of course they have a choice. Bunch of guys could get together and dig up a bunch of dirt and fill that fucking bog. Stone Age tools. You cut that shit down, you get everybody together and you carry dirt from the town and you fill it in. Human beings been doing it for thousands of years. They'd rather come home and fuck off.”
― Dan Morrison, The Black Nile: One Man's Amazing Journey Through Peace and War on the World's Longest River

“You know...when I kept falling through, all I could think was, 'How can people live like this?' And then I realized, they can live like this because they have to. They have no choice. They live as they must.”
― Dan Morrison, The Black Nile: One Man's Amazing Journey Through Peace and War on the World's Longest River

“Payback's a bitch”
― Dan Morrison, The Black Nile: One Man's Amazing Journey Through Peace and War on the World's Longest River

“People should live how they want, not how other people—richer people, well-intentioned people—want them to.”
― Dan Morrison, The Black Nile: One Man's Amazing Journey Through Peace and War on the World's Longest River

“I actually prefer riding bitch... Less thinking involved. You can actually let your mind wander.”
― Dan Morrison, The Black Nile: One Man's Amazing Journey Through Peace and War on the World's Longest River

“God as my witness...I'll never make fun of beer muscle again.”
― Dan Morrison, The Black Nile: One Man's Amazing Journey Through Peace and War on the World's Longest River

“I came here in part to figure out why things are like they are. ... I wanted to know why things are different. ... It's because of the people. Things are different here because the people are different. Not the environment, or the weather, or the geography or anything. The people. If things are going to be better, you have to want them to be better. I'm not sure I see that. They seem to be fine with the way things are. And so, I guess, they're fine. Why do foreign people try to come in and impose on them to advance technologically, economically, medically, morally, whatever, when they just want to be peasants? Or maybe the way to put it is: They are peasants, and they don't have a burning desire to be anything more, or anything else. Maybe 'more' is the wrong word.”
― Dan Morrison, The Black Nile: One Man's Amazing Journey Through Peace and War on the World's Longest River