Ujiji is a historic trading town, in modern Tanzania. In the 1960s it had a population of around 40,000. It was here, in 1858, that Richard Burton and John Speke first reached the shore of Lake Tanganyika. Thirteen years later, on 10 November 1871, the Welsh–born US journalist Henry Morton Stanley found the Scottish missionary Dr. David Livingstone in Ujiji, and reputedly spoke the famous words quot;Dr. Livingstone, I presume?"
Livingstone had returned to Africa in 1866, intending to identify the source of the Nile. He had had no contact with the outside world in the intervening five years, and he had been reported to be dead. In fact he was suffering from various debilitating tropical ailments, and at the time of his famous meeting with Stanley he had less than 18 months to live.
Henry Morton Stanley had been born in Denbigh, North Wales, in 1841. His parents were not married; he never knew his father, and after a difficult childhood he travelled to America at the age of 18 to seek a new life. He got work with the New York Herald in 1867, and two years later he was assigned to a roving commission in the Middle East, which was to include the relief of Livingstone. He travelled to Zanzibar in March 1871.
Livingstone first arrived in Ujiji in October 1871, and had only returned there on the day before Stanley's arrival. He wrote, "When my spirits were at their lowest ebb, the good Samaritan was close at hand, for one morning [my servant] Susi came running at the top of his speed and gasped out, 'An Englishman! I see him!' and off he darted to meet him. The American flag at the head of the caravan told of the nationality of the stranger. Bales of goods, baths of tin, huge kettles, cooking pots, tents, etc., made me think, 'This must be a luxurious traveller, and not one at his wits' end like me.'"
A monument known as the Dr. Livingstone Memorial was erected in Ujiji to commemorate the meeting. There is also a modest museum. In 1878, the London Missionary Society established a missionary post there – the first one on the shore of Lake Tanganyika.
There is a monument to Livingstone and Stanley at Mugere, in Burundi – a few miles south of the capital, Bujumbura. This marks a visit that the two men made some 15 days after their first meeting, on their joint exploration of northern Lake Tanganyika – not, as some assume, the first meeting itself.
© Haydn Thompson 2018