Panorama of the Nile River
It began Friday. After a day of work and meetings at the Mayanja Memorial Foundation offices, all but a few of us from the Duke Engage team grabbed our things and headed to the bus station in the Mbarara town center, where we loaded a Swift Safaris bus to Kampala, the capital. The buses usually don’t leave until they fill up and we were just in time to board the latest one – which meant a few of us, myself included, where stuck sitting in the very back row of a coach bus. For anyone who has ever experienced such a treat, then you know that with every speed bump you fly about 1 foot in the air… in Uganda, you multiply that times 3 considering the quality of the roads.
After a 6 hour bus ride, we arrived in Kampala at night and Dr. Mugerwa, who happened to be in town, picked us up and drove us to where we were staying, Backpackers. It is a cute hostel full of mostly American, European, and Canadian youngsters and a few NGOs/tourists. We stayed in a dormitory room with maybe 8 bunk beds…we just laid our stuff on any empty beds, and at night we ran into some other people sleeping in beds around us. There is a common bathroom and showers, and some of the beds have pillows – overall I would say it’s sufficiently clean and very, very affordable. And they make really good food – I had a grilled cheese sandwich and it was the most satisfying dinner ever.
The next morning at around 7am, a shuttle from the Nile River Explorers, the rafting and adventure company that two friends of the group also doing Duke Engage in Uganda chose for the day’s activities, picked us up from the hostel and took us to Jinja, a town approximately an hour and a half from Kampala. In addition to being the home of Nile Breweries, the town is located beside the source of the Nile, which comes out of Lake Victoria. Not too far from the source, the Nile has a series of rapids ranging from Class 2 to Class 5 rapids. From my understanding, quite a few companies exist that make use of the river and offer whitewater rafting, kayaking, bungee jumping, and other activities, but the Class 5 rafting full day trip is supposed to be one of the best in the world. When we got to Jinja, the shuttle took us to the main offices of the Nile River Explorers, and we signed in to our reservation. The company provided a good breakfast, briefed us, and then gave us life jackets and helmets, and we got on another shuttle which took us to the launch site. There we divided into teams of about 8 and a guide for one raft, and began our amazing journey.
I have never been rafting before, but after this amazing experience I expect I will not be easily impressed. We spent over 5 hours in the water, at times tackling rapids with names such as “Silverback,” “50/50” (as in a 50% chance we would flip over), “Chop Suey,” and others, and then at some points we were just paddling in smooth water. While our crew was pretty lucky and did not flip over on many of the most treacherous rapids, we purposely flipped on one of the last rapids, and then were completely dominated by the very last rapid that the company takes you through. While flipping over and struggling to hold on to the side of the raft with one hand and a wooden paddle with the other is pretty difficult, particularly during the few startling seconds that you find yourself completely submerged in water and looking for a way out from under the raft, falling in can be sort of fun. The water was at a perfectly cool temperature, and usually rapids are followed by still water so there is time to recuperate and get everybody back on the raft. At one point, the guides let us just swim around in some of the calmer parts of the river. Something cool about the calm time is that the company has figured out how to feed people during the day so as to make full day trips on the river (which cover a distance of 30 km) possible. The company has a gear boat that leads all the raft crew, and strapped to it are bags full of pineapple and biscuits that they distribute to us around lunch time while we are on calm water, in addition to first aid equipment, repair kits, extra equipment, and air pumps. As for our thirst, we just drank the Nile water. And impressively enough, no one in our group got sick from it. While there were a couple of bumps and scrapes and helmets crashing, everyone came out of the majestic Nile in one piece. At the end of the trip, the company puts you back on some other shuttles and they drive you to their campsite, where you can stay the night for a very cheap price in addition to the included barbecue which we all partake in – which was composed of grilled chicken, pork, and a myriad of fantastic sides to accompany the feast. Oh, it also included two free beers. We of course chose Nile Special beers, which cost the same as the other most common beers in Uganda but come in 500ml bottles.
We returned to Kampala after dinner via the company shuttle, and that night a few of us met some peers in Backpackers and we went out with them to a club/bar/hostel called Iguana Lodge, and we danced the night away on a small dance floor with a surprising number of foreigners. The next day, we went to the mall in Kampala and bought a variety of small things ranging from souvenirs/handicrafts, books, Chinese food, and gelato. Yes, gelato. Only in Kampala…
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