Bujagali Falls

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View of Bujagali Falls

Bujagali Falls (or Budhagali, according to the dialect of the Basoga tribe living in the area) is a waterfall near Jinja in Uganda where the Nile River comes out of Lake Victoria, sometimes considered the source of the Nile.

1 Proposed dam
2 The Bujagali doctor
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Proposed dam

Rafters flipping in Bujagali Falls.

An acute electricity crisis is impacting the livelihoods of millions of Ugandans and threatens the country’s development. Hospitals, schools, businesses, and residences suffer daily power shortages, which have stunted Uganda’s economic growth by an estimated one percent of the country’s gross domestic product. The Bujagali hydropower project is a proposed 250MW hydropower facility on the Victoria Nile in Uganda that would help address the country’s energy crisis. The project supports Uganda’s broader development strategy, which focuses in large part on improving the investment climate to promote growth and reduce poverty. Others say the costly dam’s power would not meet the needs of the vast majority of the country’s population, would drown a sacred waterfall, and could do further harm to Lake Victoria, the world’s largest tropical lake.

[edit] The Bujagali doctor

The Spirit of Bujagali

The falls are said by local residents to be the site of a spirit, called the "Spirit of Bujabald," who protects the community by performing rituals at the falls. The spirit is embodied in a man, Jaja Bujabald, who lives next to the falls; he is the thirty-ninth person to be the spirit.^[1]

The more than 80-year-old man works as a doctor preferably using local plants and herbs. Lots of people report to have seen him walking over the water.^{[citation needed]} Indeed he seems to be able to pass the falls where others don't dare to go.

During the Rwandan genocide in 1994, dead bodies, dumped in the lake, remained in the rocks of the falls; Bujagali removed and buried them.