8 SLEEPING SICKNESS 



watercourses throughout Uganda were infested with 

 the Tse-tse fly. 



Statistics furnished in a dispatch by the Governor 

 showed that " during the last five years the total mor- 

 tality from this scourge in this Protectorate has consider- 

 ably exceeded 200,000."i 



Sir Hesketh Bell also reported *' the natives have been 

 almost completely wiped out everywhere along the lake 

 shore, and in the islands the mortality has been even more 

 appalling. Buvuma, for instance, which a few years ago 

 was one of the most thickly populated and prosperous of all 

 the islands, counted over 30,000 inhabitants. There are 

 now barely 14,000. Some of the Sesse group have lost 

 every soul ; while in others a few moribund natives, 

 crawling about in the last stages of the disease, are all 

 that are left to represent a once teeming population." 



In November 1906, it was again suggested that the 

 only way to save the people was to remove them into 

 fly-free areas, and segregate the infected natives into 

 camps. The aid of the chiefs was sought and the matter 

 fully explained to them, compensation was made to the 

 heads of evicted families, they were given land away 

 from the infected areas, and by degrees not only the 

 mainland shores of the lake, but the islands also, were 

 cleared of their population, so that by 1909 all these were 

 deserted and going back to the wild state. ^ 



Great difficulty was experienced in preventing the 

 natives from returning to their homes, and some managed 

 to obtain canoes and cross back to Buvuma and Damba 

 Islands, but at length the evacuation was finally completed, 

 and at the present day the whole of the fertile and valuable 

 island territory is abandoned to the Tse-tse fly. 



But the lake shore can only be kept in this condition 

 by stringent regulations and penalties, and a few natives 



1 Dispatch No. 218 from Sir Hesketh Bell, November 1906. 



2 See Bulletin of the Sleeping Sickness Bureau, vol. 4, pp. 241-2. 



