I'm safely home in the hostel now, after a wonderful weekend of white water rafting on the Nile River with my new Purdue pharmacy friends.
Our journey took us to Jinja, Uganda, which is the source of the Nile River. On the drive from Eldoret to Jinja, we noticed that Uganda was much more green and tropical than our area of Kenya, and was more of the African environment we had envisioned prior to arriving in Eldoret.
The drive took about 6 hours because of poor roads and your occasional baboon crossing the street, but we finally arrived at our campsite to rest up for our big day Saturday.
We awoke to find that our campsite overlooked the Nile, which we could hear but not see in the dark of the night before. It was absolutely stunning! Below the area pictured here were showers that were open on one side facing the Nile River, so you could shower while looking out at the beautiful landscape.
We hopped on a truck with open-seating and began our trip down to the river. There we met our rafting guide, Paolo Bala, who is actually training for the world-championship of kayaking to be held in Switzerland later this month! He was an awesome guide, and we made it down all 12 rapids without flipping the boat (even though I secretly wanted to)!
Our tour of the Nile included 12 rapids, several of which were class 5 rapids. (For rafting pictures, check out the company's website (www.raftafrica.com/gallery.htm) We went through 8 in the morning, and 4 in the afternoon, with a lazy river break in the middle where we got to jump into the river and let the current take us downstream. We had lunch on the boat, which consisted of fresh pineapple and glucose biscuits (yes, that is the name of the shortbread-like cookies) and was a well-earned treat.
The Nile was surprisingly clean and very warm - it felt like bath water! Our day had started out sunny but become overcast with scattered sprinkles, so jumping into the river was actually warmer than being on the raft. In between rapids, we saw groups of people bathing in the river, women washing laundry, and others fishing. Luckily, we didn't see any crocodiles or hippos, which our guide says are rarely present in the calmer waters.
On the ride home, we drove through fields with small mud huts lining our path. Children ran down to the truck to yell "Mzungu!" and "Jambo!" and tried to get us to wave. They thought it especially exciting if we gave them the thumbs up sign, while some stood wide-eyed and pointed at us, for seeing white people was scary to them. Being from America, seeing so many different races from an early age, it is hard to comprehend that these children found our appearance so foreign and frightening!
Once we returned to the campsite, a spread of food and beer was laid out for us, and we ate, danced and celebrated our victory over the Nile. Later on in the evening, we were able to screen the video highlights of our rafting adventure (which I later bought a copy of because it was so well done)! I'll try to post it when I get back in the states with faster internet :)
We slept in the next morning, did some shopping at the small stands around the camp, and left beautiful Uganda and The Nile River with fond memories!
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