Frank In Uganda: Part 2
A friend of mine, Frank Ordway, has been working with the U of Washington and a few volunteers to help AIDS clinics in Africa migrate from paper-based systems to electronic ones. This series is made up of emails from Frank during his trip.
Parts: 1 2 3 4 5.
Yesterday was 24 hours of no work and lots of play. I have not gotten on Ugandan time at all, so in the 108 hours since I left Seattle I think I may have slept around 20. Yesterday I awoke at 3am and stayed that way until this morning at 8am. In-between was some serious fun.
I rafted the Nile. THE NILE!.
A 25 km float from just North of the headwaters of Lake Victoria, from a town called Jinja. There is a rafting guide company called “Adrift” that is locally owned and operated. The guides and support boats were captained by locals 3-1 over western outdoor guides (as in travel junkies).
I have done a fair amount of rafting, and been in big water. You may know that rapids are categorized from 1-6. 1 being a little ripple and 6 indicating high chance of death if you mess up. This trip had 12 major rapids (Which is a lot, for any river float in the world. The only recreational run in the world that compares is the Grand Canyon in big water years. But even the canyon, with its endless wave-train rapids, is not as technical as this run.
Of the 12 rapids, there were five class 5, five class 4 and 2 class 3. We portaged two class six rapids, good choice! The river at this point is a 1/4-1/2 mile across so the rapid areas are immense. We separated into the “easy going” and “bring it on” boats at the start of the day. Which do think I chose?
I swam a lot. Out boat capsized three times. I laughed and laughed. I swam a total of five times. In those rapids we were not even CLOSE to making it through. The water is deep, the rocks few, so swimming with your lifejacket was not especially dangerous. I still drank a lot of water. Good thing I got shots. There was one rapid, called “The Bad Place”. With villagers, other rafting companies and our crew looking over, my guide said with the water at these levels, we stood 1% chance of making it without flipping. As the other folks agonized, my guide, Juma, myself and three others decided to try. We called the rest of the rafters whimps (which in African means “smart”) and went for it. The villagers were chanting something about crazy white people in the big river. Quite a scene.
I am not sure I have ever flown so far. We made the first rapid, got spun around and then tossed as though from a catapult. The support kayaks quickly scooped us up and the whole thing was caught on film. Juma and rest of us were laughing so hard we good barely hold on. Villagers were cheering and the whole mess was caught on tape.
We ended the trip in a small village who had a cooler full of beer. Looking over the savannas as the sun went down over the Nile, exhausted with my arms around Juma and Ben, the local kayaker who saved me each time, was quite a moment.
Oops, my time is running out.
Much love,
Frank
