Rafting on de Nile

White water rafting…

on the Nile…

in a thunderstorm…

AND we had chapatis and guacamole with lunch.

Well done, Friday. Well done.

Last Friday was quite the experience. Five volunteers from Noah’s Ark (the Canadians, Bob, Clark, and Kendall; the German, Katarina; and myself) took bodas into Mukono to meet the rafting bus at a hotel there. As we stood outside the hotel, we briefly wondered how we would recognize the bus or how they would recognize us. It was a stupid wonder. They only needed to look for the group of muzungos (foreigners) on the side of the road and we only needed to keep an eye out for a bus full of muzungos. White skin makes us stand out a bit. I have never felt more like a tourist.

The bus picked us up, we paid our dues and signed our lives away, and we were off. Even if we had not gone rafting, the drive through the Ugandan countryside was spectacular. I don’t know if all of Uganda is a jungle, but the south certainly is. We drove through forests and hills and tea plantations. It is so green here. And stunning. Nobody needs to pity these Africans for lack of scenery.

In Jinja, we picked up some more rafters and a couple of our guides. One of them stepped on the bus, faced us and asked who had never done this before. A few hands went up. “Okay,” he said, “this here is called a bus ride. Please keep your hands and feet inside the vehicle and we’ll be there shortly.” We were off to a good start.

When we reached the Nile, they treated us to a breakfast of deep fried hardboiled eggs and sausage. I’m still not sure how I felt about the eggs. The five of us were given our own raft with a Ugandan guide named Big J. His actual name was Juma, but who wants to call him that when the alternative is Big J? He was a beast of a man who claimed he had eaten all the animals we would have otherwise seen that day and who made getting back into the raft from the water look like a piece of cake.

The Nile is picturesque. Most of it is calm and serene with green shorelines and several small islands in the middle. The temperature is perfect for swimming. It’s not frigid glacier water like in Washington and it’s not two parts seaweed and algae to one part water like in Wisconsin. Big J told us there weren’t any dangerous animals on the part we were on so in the calm sections (of which there were quite a few) he let us jump out and swim.

Katarina had just gotten back from a safari two days before and was not convinced the river was actually free from all the animals she had seen downriver. She refused to get in the first couple times we swam. At one point, she yelled to us from the boat, “You know you’re swimming in hippo poop!” She got in eventually, imaginary hippo poop and all.

The paddling-through-calm-water-to-going-down-rapids ratio was more uneven than I would have hoped, but we still had a good time. Man, were my arms tired by the end of the day. I am so out of shape! The rapids themselves were fun. On the first one, we went down an eight- or ten-foot waterfall. A couple rafts flipped on purpose. Bob was intent on staying upright, so we managed to have a relatively calm ride and not flip the whole day. How we wanted to push him in by the end!

After the first four rapids, we stopped for lunch. It was by far my favorite Ugandan food so far… chapatis! Which are basically the same thing as tortillas! AND guacamole and vegetables. I was ecstatic. It was delicious. They fed us well.

Once lunch was over, it was back on the river. We went a total of 22 kilometers or something like that. Somewhere between our seventh and eighth rapids, the sky got a little darker. We heard thunder in the distance. In not too long, the thunder was very close and it started to pour. Hard, pelting raindrops that felt more like hail or Jujubes than water. They not only made temporary craters in the river where they hit, but also displaced some water that danced above each crater for a moment before falling again. It was mesmerizing. I couldn’t wipe this cheesy grin off my face the whole time. Lunch was great, but that was my favorite part of the day for sure. I was laughing with joy.

We went down our last rapid, beached the rafts, and had kabobs for supper (it was a kabobecue, if I may say so myself). Then we piled back into the bus and started the drive home.

Not to put a damper on a fun story, but of course I have to share some of what was going through my mind on the drive back…

I hated passing the tiny Ugandan homes on our big, comfortable muzungo bus. The kids got excited and waved to us, and all I could think about was what their families would have done with the 350,000 shillings we spent that day. We drove and floated by so many people who can’t ever afford to do something like that.

Katarina had similar things to say about her safari. She loved seeing the hippos and giraffes and monkeys and everything else that showed up on the trip, but halfway through it she realized that most Africans never get the chance to see their own wildlife. They certainly can’t pay hundreds of dollars for a safari, and the animals stay away from populated areas. Here I was thinking it would be so cool to see the animals with which these people have the opportunity to live, when many of them go through their whole lives only seeing pictures and hearing stories of them. Because of zoos, I bet more kids in America get to see live giraffes than kids in Africa. That might be an exaggeration, but isn’t it weird? Are we really so spoiled that we get to experience and enjoy wildlife from all around the world and they don’t even get to see what’s in their own backyard?

Rubbish, I tell you.