6 hours on the Nile: super sun-burned thighs. Class 5 rapids: swallowed gallons of water. Feeling like you went through a human sized washing machine: priceless!
What an unbelievable experience rafting the Nile turned out to be! We went rafting in Jinja with a company called Nile River Explorers. On Saturday we got up and left for breakfast at 8:30 where we had coffee (which I found out was actually not needed when I got out in the rapids!) and a light breakfast and had our quick briefing and then loaded up in open bed trucks to head to the drop in point. In my raft there were 7 of the USP students (including Kurty and Justin Lane), which was nice because we all knew each other so that made the whole experience even more exciting. Our river guide was called Alex and he was….basically crazy, but I suppose that’s sort of a prerequisite for this sort of thing. He looked African, but sounded Australian so go figure that one out. He was very blunt, but also very entertaining. The name of the blog is a quote of his. When we got out in the water we were taught all of the commands and what to do in different situations and then he let us swim/float down a class 1 rapid, which initially scared me (and I’m sort of embarrassed about that) until later when we went through class 4 and 5 rapids. Floating around in the river made me think of Minnesota and I tried to close my eys and picture it…that is until I’d hit a wave and get water up my nose. It reminded me of tubing down the St. Croix with camp.
Anyways, enough reminiscing. The trip took about 6 or so hours to do and the day was absolutely beautiful for being out on a river. I’ll hit a few of the highlights for you or else Kurty might say I’m long-winded again (which I know I am and am probably already guilty of). At one of the rapids we went down a waterfall backwards and Justin, deciding to do something exciting for the video camera, stood up in front of me and then fell back on me and sat on my face…haha, that sounds funny to write. I smashed down on my paddle and bit a chunk into my lip, but it was well worth the adventure and the worst of any injuries.
Immediately following that we went down a rapid called Chop Suey (I would love to have a job of naming the rapids because they’re so fun). Our guide pretty much purposefully flipped us and we were under the water for probably the longest amount of time during the trip…maybe 4 seconds or so before our life jackets would pop us back up and the kayakers would paddle us back to our boat. I wish I could better describe to you the sensation of being told “get down” as you drop into the rapid and then see a wall of white, angry water about to crash down on you and knowing that the angle you are at means you will thrown into it, where you will be churned around for a while not quite knowing where up is until it pops you out and you start laughing and shouting at everyone and as soon as you get back in the boat everyone is relaying their grand experiences (how’s that for a sentence ☺). It’s unbelievable fun! It was just a great day to be alive. Kurty and I had a phenomenal time out on the Nile.
On Sunday we did some relaxing and went into Jinja. We took Boda-Bodas (mini motorcycles) into town because of the distance and that was quite the experience. I’m not exactly one for those types of things so I was a bit nervous, but ended up liking it quite a bit. We shopped around, played some cards, and then came back where we listened to our home churches sermon on my computer in the bathroom because it was about 20 degrees cooler in there! It was great to have that time to relax since in the next two weeks I have 5 papers, a project and presentation, and two final tests to prepare for. I would love your prayers for all of that because it’s a bit overwhelming especially when you pair that with the fact that we only have about 25 days left to soak up all Uganda and the people we’ve met here have to offer. Ahhh!!!
The men were amazed and asked, “What kind of man is this? Even the winds and the waves obey him! Matthew 8:27
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