My first post-research adventure: white water rafting. I was skeptical, I was hesitant, but in the end I committed to adding this to my list of things-to-do. I went rafting once before in Pennsylvania. I knew those rapids would be nothing to those that I encountered in Jinja, and I remembered well the way that fear dropped into the pit of my stomach like a cement block when I saw the white water rushing over, under, and around rocks as the raft moved closer and closer at an unstoppable speed. Did I really want to pay money to feel that again? Apparently I did.
Jinja is located just a few hours east of Kampala. It sits right on the mouth of the Nile, where Lake Victoria empties into the famous African river. The town is most famous for adventure tourism, especially white water rafting. It is, in fact, considered one of the required experiences for hard-core rafters or kayakers. Rapids are graded on a standardized scale of 1-6, 6 being considered impossible. The Nile is full of grade 6 rapids, and I registered us for the most popular grade 5 rafting tour. Why did I do this? Probably peer pressure, no, definitely peer pressure. The worst part of peer pressure is that it can make you do things, but it cannot erase your fear.
I felt like that rafting day was this dark looming date. First we departed Semliki for Fort Portal, where we spent one night before moving on to Kampala. Usually this would mean taking the early morning bus to Kampala, holding chickens and children and fending off vendors and people asking me for my money. This time I got lucky though. A friend of a friend working in Queen Elizabeth National Park was driving her car through Fort Portal and on to Kampala that day, and she was nice enough to offer a lift. It is amazing how much stuff two people can accumulate in a compact SUV after two months of living in the field. I squeezed in the back between some suitcases and a couple of boxes of pizza for the road. I felt like a queen with a working seatbelt and no stranger trying to sleep on me.
Once in Kampala we crashed into the same old hotel that I spent my first week in: New City Annex. The rooms are cramped, the beds, are tiny, and the stuffiness means just breathing makes you break into a sweat. But there are hot showers, and electricity! In the morning we were off to Jinja.
The landscape on this side of the country is a completely different scene from western Uganda. The west is full of mountains and escarpments, the most beautiful rolling hills that you’ve ever seen, and I’m from Appalachia. The hills in western Uganda look like a geology lesson to me every time I see them. I suppose for most people that sounds incredibly unromantic, but to me science holds the most romantic beauty in the world. What I mean by that is that when I see these bursts of earth cutting through the landscape, I can’t help but picture the plates beneath the earth grinding and surging and pushing against one another until these amazing hills just burst into our realm like a hidden feature humans were never supposed to see. Blankets of green and yellow cover them like they’ve been painted on, and the haze of the thin air at the top makes them look like just that, a painting.
Eastern Uganda is a different story. This part of the country is characterized by water and valleys. The land is relatively flat. Most of the time you are not even aware that the largest fresh water body in Africa, and the second in the world, is not far away. It is only when you approach Entebbe or Jinja that you are aware of the treasure that the east holds. As we drove into Jinja I could feel the air dampen. The mosquitoes emerged, and I knew we were close. Then we crossed the Nile over a rusty bridge. There it was, this famous river that I’d met so many animals named for, read about in so many books, seen on so many nature documentaries. Our shuttle pulled into a small hostel with a garage full of rafts and kayaks out front. I felt my stomach sink when I saw those rafts. My palms, I realized, were sweaty and sticking to one another, and that sinking feeling in my stomach churned as I thought about the expedition it was time for us to board.
We had a quick breakfast and some briefing from the head guide, an English South African named Jane, before we were fitted for jackets and loaded into shuttles. I felt unable to talk, to laugh with the others, or to think about anything else but how nervous I was about this rafting trip. When we got to the river we were told to strip off our shoes and socks, leave all watches, jewelry, anything we wanted to keep behind in the trucks. I hopped out of the bus and felt that familiar red clay sink under my toes. My thoughts about the rafting danger were only temporarily distracted by my thoughts on the ground dwelling parasites of Africa that like to enter human hosts through the thin skin between their toes. Is knowledge really power, or is it fear?
We sat on the ground for an extensive safety briefing. The water was laid out before me, so calm, quiet, like glass with these rafts tossed onto the surface. How could this same river hold deadly rapids? There was not another sole on the water but us, crazy mzungus looking for a little adrenaline rush to our bloodstreams. It was a cool, cloudy day, and the color of the haze in the sky seemed to match the haze of apprehension that was clouding my brain right then. Still, I focused in on every safety instruction given.
I got into a boat with my friend Austin and two couples, one from Denmark and the other from Holland. My sinking heart seemed to lift a bit when the lead guide, Jane, hopped into our boat with a new guide in the final stages of his training. I suddenly felt much safer. We ran through a few practice drills in this placid region of the river: how to get back in the boat, how to sit if you are near rocks, how to hold paddles so you don’t hit someone. All of this seemed to release a bit of the tension that I was feeling. I could feel my tensed muscles easing up a bit.
Then we approached the first rapid. Silence fell over the boat, and nervous laugher turned to focus. Had everyone else really waited until now to get afraid? As the boat tipped and waved over the first one, all I could see were walls of water around me, and all that my mind would let me hear was Jane’s voice screaming “Left paddle! All paddle! Left Back!” When we made it over I felt every muscle in my body give away tension I didn’t even know I’d been holding, and my body collapsed into giddy giggles. Soon all of us were smiling and laughing as the boat gently eased down the glass-like river once more.
The second rapid was a grade 5. This is the most difficult rapid that tours will take you on. We were presented with options from our guide. Move in one direction and we will probably not flip, or experience anything too intense. Move in another direction and we have a 50/50 chance of staying in the raft. Move in yet another, and we will probably all be thrown from the raft. I was not prepared for this. Choices? My eyes darted back and forth searching for signs of motivation in the other riders’ faces. The decision: we would take the 50/50 chance. I was feeling brave after the last rapid, so I agreed to it, though reluctantly.
As the sounds overwhelmed me and the water sprayed into my face I suddenly realized we had no control over that raft. The wall of water that rose in front of me this time did not stop rising. In fact, it began to fold, closer, and closer, and then a rush of panic filled my veins as I realized that I was under water, and not in the boat. I could not see, could not feel, and could not breathe. The water pulled me in a hundred directions at once, spinning and flipping me as I pulled and reached for the surface that no longer seemed to exist. Then I felt the boat, but I was not on it, I was under it. I tried to surface, but my head kept bouncing against the raft, and I was gulping water in a desperate attempt to breathe. This felt like an eternity, but it was probably only ten seconds. Then I found it, air, sweet air, rushing into my lungs. My hands were clinging to the boat before I even realized it. Jane was yelling commands to flip the boat, and someone was pulling me in by my lifejacket. Then I felt it again, that release of tension. This time it was compounded by adrenaline and cortisol that still rushed through my blood and all that I could do was laugh. It was minutes later that half of the Nile seemed to rush out of my nose, the effects of which I’m still feeling in the form of a sinus infection. Was it worth that adrenaline drug that filled my veins? I’m not sure, but I did enjoy that feeling right after.
We made it through four more rapids that day. In between we rowed and chatted and laughed at stories while surrounded by glass-like water and birds of every shape and size. And I survived. More than survived, I actually enjoyed myself. It was back to the hostel that night, then back to Kampala in the morning.
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