Our Lady of the Nile

An elite Catholic girls' lycee perched high in the mountains of southern Rwanda, close to a spring held to be a source of the Nile. Behind the convent order and the school routine, the Hutu quotas and Tutsi persecution of the wider country play out among the pupils, a rehearsal in miniature for the genocide still to come. The map runs from the forested highlands near the Nile source down to the town of Butare and out to the capital, Kigali.

Virginia

The source of the Nile, Rukarara

The spring

The school is named for a statue of the Virgin that stands by a trickle of water in the mountains, revered as a source of the Nile. The real headwater lies in the Nyungwe forest of southern Rwanda, a muddy pool that modern surveys identified as the river's furthest origin from the sea.

The Nile spring above the lycee

explicit The novel takes its name from the spring near the school, held to be a source of the Nile; this marks the Rukarara headwater in the Nyungwe highlands that a 2005-2006 expedition traced as the river's most distant source.

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