When Water Turns White

Hello again. As an update, my 3rd degree chafing that I received from my camel marathon has healed. Yeah, it was difficult but I'm pretty tough. For my pain I was rewarded with a quote in one of the major Kenyan newspapers. It turns out that a woman who was traveling with us is a travel writer in the weekend edition of the newspaper. She got a quote from me and two other volunteers. Not bad.

After the derby I went back to my site and taught for a week. The Form 3's and 4's were required to come for two weeks for extra lessons and revision to prepare them for the exams. It's also a time for teachers to cover more ground in the extensive and expansive syllabus that the exams glean questions from. Following that week of teaching I decided to visit my friend Eric and see his neck of the woods. He stays up around Eldoret, which is a part of the rift valley and a highland area. It was quite a bit cooler and wetter than my place. We relaxed around his place, made burritos, watched movies, played pinball on his laptop, tossed the frisbee, learned to stand on our heads, and Eric tried to prepare me for rafting.

You see, in just a few short days we would be rafting the River Nile. This is a pretty common activity for most volunteers in this area of Africa. Usually each training group plans a trip and raft together. My group had planned one last year, but I was attending a training at the same time. It always sounded like fun. I had never rafted before, and it seemed like the Nile would be amazing as a first rafting experience. Its THE NILE. The longest river in the world. I somehow was able to forget that I'm uncomfortable in water. But as the rafting day drew nigh I thought about it more and I kept having images of this activity being the last living thing I would ever do. It would be something like my swan song here on earth. I was encouraged by the scientifical fact that the human brain can survive for 5 minutes without oxygen. You could say that I was 'scared out of my gourd'.

But I had one more stop on my funeral march. After leaving Eric's site we joined up with a few others and spent a couple days in the Kakamega rain forest. We hiked around, explored a bat cave, and whiled away the hours in tranquil luxury.

The following day we set out for Uganda, crossed the border without much difficulty and spent the night in Jinja at Nile River Explorers campsite which overlooks the Nile. I awoke with some anxiety the next morning. Some explanation on rafting: A raft is just an inflatable boat powered and steered by oars. Our raft carried 6 people and 1 guide. Everyone is equipped with a life jacket and a helmet. Along the sides of the raft is rope that you can hold onto in case the raft flips. The raft is steered down the river over a series of rapids. The rapids are classified according to their degree of danger or difficulty. According to Wikipedia:

Class 1: Very small rough areas, requires no maneuvering. (Skill Level: None)
Class 2: Some rough water, maybe some rocks, might require maneuvering.(Skill Level: Basic Paddling Skill)
Class 3: Whitewater, small waves, maybe a small drop, but no considerable danger. May require significant maneuvering.(Skill Level: Experienced paddling skills)
Class 4: Whitewater, medium waves, maybe rocks, maybe a considerable drop, sharp maneuvers may be needed. (Skill Level: Whitewater Experience)
Class 5: Whitewater, large waves, maybe large rocks and hazards, maybe a large drop, precise maneuvering (Skill Level: Advanced Whitewater Experience)
Class 6: Class 6 rapids are considered to be so dangerous as to be effectively unnavigable on a reliably safe basis. Rafters can expect to encounter substantial whitewater, huge waves, huge rocks and hazards, and/or substantial drops that will impart severe impacts beyond the structural capacities and impact ratings of most all rafting equipment. Traversing a Class 6 rapid has a dramatically increased likelihood of ending in serious injury or death compared to lesser classes. (Skill Level: Successful completion of a Class 6 rapid without serious injury or death is widely considered to be a matter of luck)

So needless to say, rafting companies never take people along a Class 6 rapid.

Here's what I was facing, including the name of the rapid and its classification:

Rib Cage - 4
Bujagali Falls - 5
50/50 - 3
Total Gunga - 5
Surf City - 3
Silverback - 5
Jaws - 3
Pyramid - 2
Overtime - 5
Retrospect - 4
Bubogo - 4
Itanda Falls - 6
The Bad Place - 5

So that is five Class 5's, and three Class 4's. You notice that one is a Class 6. We actually had to get out of the river and carry the raft over land to pass that rapid. Then we got back in the river and finished with a Class 5. Our raft flipped by far the most times. We flipped on five of the rapids, often on purpose. Before we began the told everyone to get into a group of the same mentality and find a guide of similar mentality. So in my group we were like 'Lets go crazy!' 'We want the wildest experience money can buy!' So we found a guide who was determined to do that. On the very first one we didn't flip out, but we got rocked pretty hard and I fell in and wasn't able to hold on to the rope. We were still passing through the rapid so I was hit left and right by huge amounts of water and was getting tossed like a rag doll. The sound of the water is deafening, you don't know which way is up, and I just reminded myself the current would eventually carry me out of the rapid. In the meantime my swimming trunks have been almost ripped from my body. Luckily an experienced rafter warned us this may happen so I had tied the front to my life preserver. So I'm disoriented, got my bare behind exposed, gasping for air, I've swallowed a bunch of water, and I'm generally "freakin' out". There are rescue kayaks that continually circle the rafts so I cling on to one of those and he carries me back to my raft. That was my first rapid, so I was assuming that all rapids were going to be like that. That ended up being the scariest and craziest one, so at least I got it out the way early, although it made me pretty paranoid of what the other rapids had in store for me.

All in all, nobody died, nobody was really injured, and there was sweet relief and sense of accomplishment after it was all said and done. The rafting company sent a raft full of their trainees over the Class 6 rapid. That was crazy to watch, but they made it. One guy lost his trunks in the process. We were exhausted and they drove us back to the campsite for a BBQ buffet and in the evening we watched a DVD of our adventure they had shot that day. I bought a copy so I could prove to people I really did it. I'm not really sure if I would do it again or not. I think I need some time to forget how it felt to be staring at a large wall of water, the ominous thundering of approaching waves, and the ferocity at which the waves crashed.

I wanted to go bungee jumping the next day overlooking the Nile, but they were closed that day, so I'll have to try that another time.

Now its back to school next week as I finish my last term in Kenya. 3 months to go! See ya soon.