Rafting the Nile

Lake Victoria, here in Uganda, is the living source for The Nile River. If you jump on in Uganda and ride it out, you will end up in Egypt. I had signed up with a company called Adrift to spend a full day white water rafting this legendary river. My goal? Not to end up in Egypt. The rafts were to launch in a town called Jinja, but I was instructed to meet the company bus in downtown Kampala. This would give me the opportunity to assess my rafting teammates. After all, these are people you will be relying on to keep your raft from flipping over and to pull you back into the raft when deadly rapids are determined to suck the last breath out of you. The first person I meet is Fredrik. I quickly interview him to see if I want him to be in my raft: He is from Sweden and has only been rafting once. “I wouldn’t really call what I did white water rafting”. Strike one. Then I find out he is a mountaineer who has just concurred Mt. Rwenzori. Perfect. He is athletic and has endurance. He makes the cut and I decide he will be in my raft. Together we walk to the upper level parking lot to find the bus and along with the other “candidates”. I stop dead in my tracks when I see them. The bus is filled with a group of juvenile delinquents fully decorated with piercings and tattoos. In hard-core British accents they are yelling, cursing and screaming at each other… they are all chain smoking, one is getting sick behind the bus, while another is taking a “wee”, as she calls it. We’re all going to die. Other than Fredrik and myself, there are only two other people not with the juvies, a young English man and his girlfriend from Kenya. Now, the girl from Kenya is as thin as a toothpick and she has on an outfit that you would expect to see in a club, complete with high-heals and she has never been rafting. The situation continues to get worse. I try to relax and enjoy the scenery as we pass through the rural villages. When we arrive to our launch base camp I see a glimmer of hope, new potential team mates. While the juvies are all protesting that breakfast should be included in the cost of the trip, I pull aside the manager of the Adrift and say, “if at all possible, we really would rather not be put on the same rafting team as the young-ones.” He kindly smiled and said I was not the first to make that request. I’m not sure if Fredrik realized yet that I was speaking for him, but dam it I had found one qualified teammate and I was not about to be separated from him. Then, I noticed that the new people only had five members. There was room for two more people on their raft. It was either me and Fredrick or the English guy and his Kenyan girlfriend. Fredrik quickly picked-up on my strategy when he noticed that I was staying close to the group of five. He shot me a knowingly look and a smile and came to join me. It worked… the guide put us in with the group of five! First up is to meet our teammates. After introducing ourselves, we share in our relief of not have to be in the same raft with the juvies. We have a fun group of seven all around the same age. Believe it or not, mostly American women who were visiting a friend working in Uganda. She had brought along a colleague, Troy from England, who together with Fredrik gave our raft a bit more testosterone. We spent over an hour practicing safety techniques… jumping in and out of the raft, developing a strategy on getting the team back in, what to do if you are caught under the raft, what to do if the raft flips, etc. I have been rafting four times now and have never taken this much time to review safety procedures. I also noticed there was more rescue kayakers present than on any other rafting trip. The kayakers are there for your safety. They paddle ahead of the raft so if you fall out, they are right there for you. After our safety procedures are completed to our guide’s satisfaction, we get a briefing on the river. White water rapids are broken down into six classes; class one being very easy… you don’t even need a helmet. Class six is extremely difficult and your raft is guaranteed to flip. During our overview the guide explains that we will be hitting five class fives. Did I hear him correctly? Five? I’ve never completely three in one trip and that was when I became a member of the Zambezi swim team. It was at that very moment I accepted the fact that I would also become a member of The Nile Swim Team. Well, they waste no time warming you up. The first rapid we hit is a class five. Sort of like Victoria Falls, you can hear them before you see them. We are instructed to stay to the right if we fall in, because off to the left becomes a class six and you can get stuck in a “wash machine”. The guide speaks as if flipping out of the raft is inevitable. I feel even more discourage when the whole village is gathered to watch the rafts at this very point. No sooner do we hit this monstrous wave, our guide yells, “GET DOWN IT”, which is our signal to kneel in the raft and hold on for dear life. It doesn’t work. We are first tossed around in our rubber saucer from wave to wave before The Nile reaches in and takes us one by one. Despite being on the left side on the boat, I was so determined to avoid “the wash machine” that I swam under the raft to the right side. At this point I was close enough to the shore to stand on a rock and just jump back in the boat… thanks to my Keen Hybrids. They earned their value on this trip. No time to admire my shoes, more rapids to come. In between navigating the rapids, we are blessed with beautiful landscapes, small islands, diverse birds, villagers using The Nile to wash their clothes; we even surprise a few boys who are soaped down and taking a bath. Well, at the end of our journey, we are a bit water-logged and we’ve drank plenty of The Nile, but we all agree, we had the time of our lives. Back at the bus I’m surprised to see that all the juvies survived as well. I try and see if Fredrik and I can catch a ride back to Kampala with our rafting team mates and avoid the juvie bus, but unfortunately there is no room in their small van. Fredrick and I decide if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. We grab a couple of Nile beers and get to know the rough bunch in between their footballer songs. All in all they are just a group of teenagers who’ve had a rough start in life and are trying to sort it all out. Still wouldn’t want to be in raft with them, but having a beer with them ended up being not so bad after all.