The impromptu Uganda trip

My host home in Nairobi is quite popular amongst Fadhili volunteers who are placed on projects outside Nairobi. My hostess’ splendid hospitality has earned her a good reputation so when people need to come out to the city for shopping and such and need a place to stay, its her name that usually comes up. Near enough every weekend, and sometimes weekdays, we have someone staying over that isn’t an “original” housemate. A few weeks ago we had a young lady come through who had just returned from a trip to Uganda where she bungee jumped and went white water rafting on the Nile and made it sound excellent. It didn’t take much convincing for all 10 of us staying at the house to sign up for it.

On the evening of last Thursday, we eagerly hopped on a bus from central Nairobi, for what turned out to be an eleven-hour bus ride. The roads between Nairobi and Jinja (the town we were going to in Uganda) were not exactly smooth so we were in for a bumpy ride. The bus was reasonably comfortable (picture a standard coach bus) and we even had more leg room than one would on most economy flights. I was still battling with the flu and hoping to get some rest on the bus ride so it was fairly irritating when a bunch of Kenyans, who we had the misfortune of sitting next to, decided that they would talk and laugh loudly for nearly five hours of the journey. They spoke in a mixture of Kiswahili and English and from what I could gather it was lets-scoff-at–the-West-Africans day. Of course that did not sit well with me so it wasn’t too long before I told them to be quiet (took a lot of composure to do it politely). They took their time but did shut up eventually. We got to Jinja at the crack of dawn and thankfully, there was someone there to take us to the campsite we were going to be staying at. The site was on a cliff overlooking the river. Further upstream, there was an even bigger cliff over which the bungee jumping was to take place.

Uganda is a beautiful country and though the car ride from the bus stop to the campsite was fairly short and it was quite foggy, the lush green foliage, beautifully red earth and the strings of hills in the horizon did not escape me. The air was so fresh and the view from the bar at the campsite was just spectacular: the Nile river at the bottom which just seemed to go on forever, foggy hills meeting the skyline and the cliff on the other side of the river was scattered with beautiful homes that I admired albeit enviously.

Some of my group opted to bungee jump; now for those of you that know me well, you will know that I would NOT in a million years contemplate a bungee jump. I mean why would I consciously jump of a cliff? Don’t care if I’m being harnessed properly, just the thought of jumping off is alien to me. So I was designated the role of camerawoman. I caught them all on camera jumping, one after the other and it started to look like fun. Then my left eye started to feel itchy and funny and an hour later I could barely keep it open. It was swollen and red and streaming with tears; think someone mentioned conjunctivitis (my hostess’s adorable 10.5month son had an eye infection the week before and I do play with him a fair deal so it was not that outrageous to have caught one). I contacted my emergency medical service, a.k.a. my sister, the pharmacist and she recommended something that would put me out of my misery. Someone volunteered to go drug hunting for me and ended up being away for much of the day. I had to keep my eyes shut the whole time cause it was just too painful to keep them open. Finally, at about 4pm she turned up. I applied the drug and it started to feel relief almost instantaneously. I was feeling down though because everyone was in such good spirits and there I’d been, lumped up on the couch pretty much all day. So, at dusk that day I made the bold decision to bungee jump with the sunset in the background in tandem with one of the girls in my group. I was fine walking up to the top of the cliff but I started to panic a bit once I was tied up and had to shuffle right to the edge to be pushed off. I held on tightly to my mate and next thing I knew I was flying down, eyes shut, screaming like a 6 yr old and wondering what the hell I was doing. Must admit that after the initial downward surge, it started to feel good; we bounced around a few times and next thing I knew, we were in a boat, on our way back to dry land. It was short, exciting and downright crazy! I enjoyed it but not sure its an experience I would want to repeat, but who knows? With my eye feeling much better now, I made it an early night as we had a reasonably action-packed day of white water rafting ahead. They showed us a video of the group that had gone out on the Nile that day and it looked like a ton of fun. We spent the night in bunk beds; 4-tiered bunk beds, 15 of us to a room. It was quite the experience; after some chatting and chuckling, we finally fell asleep

We were on the river the next day by about 10am clad in life jackets and clothes that we hoped we wouldn’t lose in the rapids. The rafts were of the blown up plastic kind. Each raft had a guide (an experienced rafter who would save us if anything bad happened and would teach us a thing or two about how to navigate the river) and we were each equipped with a paddle. There were also a few kayakers in the mix, who would also assist with rescue if it came to it. After a brief paddling lesson and instructions on what to do in the strong rapids, we were on our way; in my case with one and a half eyes! The fun began almost immediately; we went through a grade 3 rapid (the rapids that we encountered were graded 1 – 5, with grade 5 rapids being very rough and in some cases with fairly steep waterfalls) after which we attempted a boat flip! Our guide (a fun Ugandan guy) basically tipped the boat over and we were all in the water. We went through 11 rapids that first day, with a lovely lunch break on an island in the middle of the river some time after rapid number 5. Our guide was quite the joker: straight-faced, he pointed out buffalos (actually cows) grazing in nearby plains, referred to croaking frogs as mini hippos and told us that he’d lived on a tiny island right in the middle of the river which had nothing but grass and gigantic tree on it, for 10 years. Apparently he slept right under the tree! (yeah right! but he said it with such a serious look that we almost believed him) Between rapids we enjoyed the calmness of the river, the gorgeous scenery and went swimming. And I kid you not, we were not half way through the day before my eyes were pretty much fully recovered. I reckon swimming in the Nile healed me, biblical style. Who said miracles were not possible?

We were done rafting for the day by 5pm. We camped at a site close to the point of the river where we’d stopped. It was actually a lot of hard work rowing all day and battling with the rapids. There’d been a few bruises and scrapes through the day and one of the girls from one of the other rafts (who is my housemate actually) got a broken nose when someone (another housemate of mine) fell on her whilst they were going through a rapid. We had a splendid dinner that day: grilled beef, chapatti, rice, breadfruit casserole and pasta. Drinks were also aplenty that night. The campsite (I never really found out the location of it) had no electricity so after dinner we retired to a nice cozy fire out in the open and admired the beautifully starlit night. It was fantastic!

The second day of rafting was more chilled. There was a lot more swimming and admiring the scenery than dealing with rapids. There was one grade 5 rapid in which we raft surfed; it was basically a huge wave against which our raft was precariously held with a huge risk of being tipped over any minute; you did not want to get caught in that wave and one girl from my raft fell into it and was sucked in for a while and came out looking petrified; it was crazy and scary but too much fun! Some of the guys also did some individual river rafting after we were done with that. That was fun to watch but me alone with water that rough and a surfboard just did not sound like a good idea. We had lunch on some nearby rocks after that bit of excitement; I sadly fell, pretty hard on some slippery rocks, which of course added to my repertoire of bruises and scrapes.
After 2 days of fun, bruises and such we were ready to head back to the main campsite. We had drinks, dinner, hot showers and called it a day; well I called it a day, the others opted to have a drinking session which ended on a morbid note for one of the lads cause he was so sick. I was never really into that sort of fun, plus it seemed my flu had started to gain momentum again after spending so much time in the water. The second day ended up being a lot colder than the first. I wasn’t complaining though; figured some medication and sleep would set me straight hence the early retirement

We woke up bright and early the next day, flu still nice and strong, to catch the bus back to Nairobi. The 11-hour bus ride felt twice as bumpy as the ride into Jinja; think it was the same route though. We got into the bus station at about 7pm and caught another bus to take us home.

I enjoyed the Uganda trip very much notwithstanding my poor state of health. I hope to go back there some day for a more lengthy stay and maybe even to try my hands at kayaking down the Nile.