I thought the article could be even more lively by introducing movement and subjectivity into the first paragraph. It only takes a couple words, e.g.,

"Beyond the smoke-plumed villages and dry acacia trees, we descended toward the Great Rift Valley, and beyond the hills hung the blue haze of Africa, and everywhere were birds -- crowned cranes and cordon bleus, shrikes and sunbirds, and overhead sailed greedy-beaked vultures, strange eagles and the fearsome black kites of Africa. Here, in Equatoria, in the heart of Africa, with Congo to the west, Rwanda to the south, one senses what this continent must have been, when the Blue Nile was not impeded by Owen Dam but wandered freely, like the kites, from Lake Victoria to the fertile delta of Egypt. "