Look Ma No Hands!

[WARNING: If you are my mom, you may experience slight numbness in your left arm and shortness of breath after reading the following post. Proceed with caution.]

This weekend can only be summed up as the most terrifyingly amazing weekend I’ve ever had. Let’s start it off with the drive from Eldoret to Kisumu (both in Kenya) then to Jinja, Uganda. This would have gone a bit more smoothly if an incident with a bus didn’t just go from Kenya to Uganda  a week ago, so it took us an hour and a half when it should have taken about ten minutes. We had to get out and get stamped for exiting Kenya and exchange money with someone who printed out a nametag for himself that called him a “Money Collector.” We are friends with our tour guide – remember Jay? – so he got us a good exchange rate. They still had to check the car over and over since it was new and then of course we parked in an area we couldn’t get out of since a truck parked behind it and was getting filled up with sacks of stuff. But eventually we got out of Kenya, drove across to Uganda, and got out again to get our stamp for entering Uganda. So finally we were on our way to Jinja where the real adventures would begin.

                We got in around 4:30 (hoping to get there closer to 3:00, oh well) and entered the campsite where we would be taking the buses for our white water rafting trip down the Nile! This adventure wouldn’t begin until tomorrow though, so we just got a few beers with three other friends that we were meeting there and grabbed some dinner in the campsite that we were staying. This was the easy day. We walked around the site a bit, which was amazing. It was all built into the side of a mountain that faced the Nile. There was a long walkway that led to a small beach. The dinner/restaurantish place in the camp looked out over the water as well, which was so cool to see. We all hung out there for a few hours, but knowing the adventure would begin bright and early the next morning, we headed to bed kind of early.

                There were four of us that were going so we got up with the ring of the alarm, threw on our bathing suits, and other layers – thankfully someone we knew went the day before and told us to put on longer layers because the sun was pretty brutal out there. We jumped on the bus with about 40 others and were on our way. Now to give you a bit of a background, we went this weekend because Jessica’s brother, who is in the Peace Corps in Uganda, was going with 30-40 others. If you want to take a time machine back to the 60s hang out with about 30 Peace Corps guys and girls, it’s a trip, no pun intended. So we were off in our rickety, open air bus thing to where we would take off in our rafts. We got a group of 6 together, the four of us plus Jessica’s brother and a random guy who was not part of the Peace Corps. We got sent off with Henry, our fearless driver of the raft. He did not talk much – even with my prodding of questions and general chit chat – but he did an awesome job of directing our tube. So to get the best picture of the trip down the Nile you’ll have to check out all the pics that I downloaded and at some point a video – which I will never be able to upload because of the internet signal, but believe me the flips are amazing on it – but I’ll give some highlights. We went over 11 Class 3 to 5 rapids with some Class 1 and 2 rapids intermingled throughout. Henry gave us some instructions as to what we should be expecting and what we should be doing when going down these rapids, but as someone who has never white water rafted down anything - unless tubing down a tiny river in the back of my house in CT counts – showing is nothing like doing. So he had us jump out of the tube, he flipped over the tube and all the rest, so we could kinda see what could happen. With what was apparently enough instruction, we were on our way and a class 5 was first. There were three important instructions, paddle forward, paddle hard forward, and get down! I was very good at the get down one. At that point you lay your paddle across the outside of the raft and hold on to the rope around the tube, while ducking inside of the tube – better to just see the pics. I’m the one in the light pink helmet with the light gray shirt on. It’s kind of hard to spot me because I was on the wrong side of the camera most times, probably better this way since I know I had a look of panic on my face at all times. So the first two rapids were terrifying but so much fun. It’s like you are zooming down the river then crashing into a wall of water, the tube taking it over, then crashing into more until the water calms down. Very cool.

Mom skip this paragraph: So I can say that I only thought I was going to die once, which I think is pretty good when there are 11 very big and fast rapids to overcome. Ironically it was a Class 3, which was wrongly named 50/50. I would like to call it 90/10. This is because I would say 90% of the boats that tried going over ended up flipping. We were one of the unlucky ones. We went over a part and then a big wall just pushed us over. Now this would have been all fine and dandy if I popped back up, but no, I was under water to the point that I thought to myself, hmmm am I getting above the water at some point? Breathing would be nice right now. And then I finally did, and then more water whooshed over me, but of course, they know this happens all the time so there are a lot of guys in kayaks all around us which I immediately swam over to and grabbed on to the handle on the top of it. He brought me back over to the raft where 3 people were and Henry. Two of the girls got swept away and another raft pulled them up onto it. We saw them again a little while later. So yeah that was kinda scary, but you never feel better than that first breath you get after being under for awhile.

 So the rest of the time was crazy, but exhilarating. One of my favorite rapids had to be the waterfall we went over. It was a class five and looking down on it, it looked like there was no way we were going to get over. It was called Overtime, correctly named as it was 3 and a half meters up so roughly tenish feet. This may not seem too high if you are looking from flat ground but when you are going over it in a raft it’s a different story. There are some awesome pics of it in the photo gallery.

 It’s really hard to describe the exhilarating feeling you have going through each and every rapid as you think you could inevitably get flipped, but instead you just barrel through with mountains of water rocketing in your way. The entire trip down the Nile lasted almost 6 hours, so there was a lot of downtime. My arms are still a little sore from all the rowing we did. We also got to jump out of the raft during the down times and swim. So you then have to think to yourself while floating in the water, “hey, I’m floating in the Nile, this is unreal.” What made it even better was everyone got to the side of their tube and flipped off into the water. I don’t know the last time I flipped off of a boat, but I couldn’t miss a chance to do it again, so I climbed up and flipped away. Man, it’s fun to flip into water. Well the adventure for the day was done and we took the rickety bus 40 minutes back to camp. We got an awesome bbq and two drink tickets to celebrate the day’s adventure. Some of us explored around the site and then watched the video they made for us – I’m hoping I get a copy that is supposed to circulate around at some point. So many boats flipped through the course of the day, which made it a lot of fun to watch after the fact. You know, always fun to watch terrifying events after they occur. We hung out a bit more before bed. Now, there is one other thing in this area that a lot of people do, but I wasn’t sure if there was going to be enough time. I also heard that a couple of Peace Corps people were going to go, so I talked with Jay and he hooked it up for the morning.

Mom, you will probably want to skip this paragraph too. What did Jay set up the night before? Why did I not get a lot of sleep that night??? Because I was getting up early to go bungee jumping!!! Yes I am one of those crazy people that if the opportunity arises will do scary stuff that human beings were never meant to do. So I got up after a restless night feeling very nauseous, butterflies flying all around my stomach. I found the two guys I talked to the night before who were getting the other Peace Corps people together and we were already to go. Since we needed to get back to Kisumu as soon as I jumped, I was told to go first. I set up Lauren (the other GW person) and Jay to take pics and video tape the crazy experience. Jessica came up to the top of the plank to take pictures. I’m not sure what to call it, but plank kinda sounds appropriate. The other 5 Peace Corps people came out on the plank too. You’ll see in the pics the process of getting situated in since Jess did an awesome job of taking pictures of all the steps leading to my jump. It’s hard to describe the feelings up to the actual jump, but for anyone who has done it before, the anticipation before the jump is not a good feeling. I had the rope all tied on to my ankles – which consisted of a blue towel and some blue cinch cord – which the actual bungee clipped on to. The guy doing it said it was a Kikuyu tradition and it was 100% safe. I said uh-huh and got up to start my slow trek to the edge. I had to mini jump to one part and then shuffle the rest of the way to the edge. One of the pics caught exactly what I was feeling by showing my toes curled around that edge. I had to put my hands up to a bar to steady myself and prepare to go. When I was ready I was told to lower my arms and say out loud that I’m ready. Lowering my arms from the bar was very difficult, I probably put them back up 3 times, but thankfully everyone was very patient. Then the guy that was leading the whole thing told me he would say 1, 2, 3, bungee! And then I was to jump out like I was doing a belly flop. So he said 1, 2, 3, bungee and I said wait what, no! I apparently was not ready just yet. So we had to try one more time.  There was one point that I really did not know if I was going to be able to do it. Thankfully being a stubborn enough person that would never let me live it down for turning around, I sucked it up and the next time I heard 1... 2... 3... BUNGEE! I leapt into the air. Not sure if I completely remember the whole falling part, but it was crazy amazing. I swan dived with the Nile beneath me and the second I sprung back up it couldn’t have felt better. Then I got to bounce a bunch of times before being lowered a little to the boat below. There were two men there to get me. I grabbed onto one of the paddles and lied down in the boat. Yelling and cheering all around me, it was a feeling that you can only have after jumping into nothingness I guess. Go bungee jump, then you will know how I felt. Terror to excitement in a split second, utter craziness.

 So we hopped on the road back to Kenya (border crossing a million times better), leaving behind experiences that I can never relive in those exact moments. It was truly amazing. Each weekend passes and is better than the previous… what’s next?

(Mom, nothing is next, don’t worry about it.)