April's Fool
For decades the source of the Nile was hotly contested, confounding scientists and geographers with its endless channels and springs. Half of Uganda is named after the English cartographers and explorers who lost their lives (or their marbles) in the search for the source. For a while the theory that held the most sway was that the Nile was in Zambia, connected somehow to the mighty Zambezi. Then explorers turned their focus to Uganda, then Tanzania. And yet it remained elusive, running nearly 7,000 kilometres, seemingly from nowhere.
Eventually it was decided that the river begins from Lake Victoria, which is bordered by Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya. Nearly 7,000 kilometres from Uganda to Cairo. That’s a lot of water. Imagine how powerful that must be coming from the source… Imagine the whitewater. Imagine the tourist potential.
Jinja is the place to be if you’re interested in rafting, so I rode out on Saturday morning with Jason, an HIV doctor and avid kayaker, who was reading a book about hot-dogging moves that are popular on the “squirt boat” rodeo circuit. One contained a description about what can happen when the move goes awry: nasal flushing. By the end of the day, I’d become intimately acquainted with the term.
Whitewater rapids are graded on their degree of danger and difficulty. A one is flat, moving water, while a six is technically unrunnable, in the sense that you would be unlikely to survive it. Niagara Falls, for example, is a class six rapid. The Nile whitewater route in Jinja has three class five rapids and one class six. It’s one of the world’s wildest whitewater routes, but as our guide, Jane, explained, it’s also one of the most forgiving. It’s big and intimidating, but it’s not very rocky and has good, deep warm swells, meaning even if you get dumped, you’re unlikely to go into shock or bash against a rock in the process.
We were corseted into our lifejackets, had brain buckets snapped on our heads and started out, just a few hundred metres up from the hydro electric dam. Jane put us through our paces, teaching us how to paddle (arm straight, use your body, don’t twirl your paddle and whatever you do, keep your hand on your T-grip or you’ll end up knocking out someone’s teeth) and what to do on her command. Forward meant we paddled, backward meant we back paddled. Jump right meant those on the left leapt to the right side to stop us from hurtling into a rock. Get down meant crouch down in the boat, up on your feet with one hand on the rope and the other hanging on to your paddle. We were to stay on our feet or face bashing our knees or spines against the rocks. Stop was my personal favourite of the commands. It meant take a break.
Jane had me demonstrate how to get back in the boat in the event of a spill or a flip. The water was surprisingly warm, but my re-entry was pathetic. And not at all graceful. I was wearing my favourite pants, the black drawstrings that have seen me through half a dozen countries and all sorts of crazy stunts. I nearly lost them once or twice in water that had a curiously strong current.
We passed the first rapid without any problems, then faced our first class five. I must have been looking rather grim, as Jane told me not to worry, that even if we dumped, we would just get back in the boat. “Downtime,” or time spent churning under the water at a rapid, is usually no longer than 10 seconds, but imagine, for a minute, that you have no sense of up or down, you’re scared of hitting rocks, things are bashing into you, the water is pushing and pulling, your paddle is waving wildly and you’ve got water up your nose. Suddenly 10 seconds feels like an awfully long time. Don’t worry, Jane told us. Just curl yourself up in a ball (to save your arms, legs and feet from rocks) and wait for your lifejacket to do its job. You’ll pop up. Take a short quick breath and open your eyes. Figure out where you are and where you’re headed. If you’re near the boat, swim to it. If you’re near a safety kayak, swim to it. If you’re near vegetation, get away from it and get away quickly. It’s got a lot of roots underneath and they’ll gladly get you tangled up and before you know it, your downtime is dangerously long.
So. The first class five rapid. Massive. The only thing bigger is unrideable. Jane tells us all about it, how there’s rocks here and rocks there but we’re basically going to go right down the middle, hit the hole and surf out of it. We should be able to stay in the boat. In truth, I am not really listening to any of this and all of the rapids begin with this same speech, about how we’ll do this and do that. What happens is actually quite different, so whether I listen makes no difference. I am concentrating on not giving away the fact that I am Class Five Freaked Out.
We paddle forward, then power forward, water roaring and crashing and the turning and swaying. Then (apparently) we surf for a while and then the wave decides it’s had enough of us and flings us into the air. One minute we’re following the command to “get down!” and the next thing I know, I’ve got water up my nose and am being thrashed around. My brain is thinking: “don’t panic, don’t panic” but the rest of me is thinking: “I’m dying! I’m dying!” I sprang up – it was probably no more than three seconds but felt much, much longer – gasped for air, opened my eyes and saw a huge wall of water. Smash! Another snoutful of water, a few more seconds of thrashing around. Then… nothing. The kayakers came over, scooped me up (and by that I mean I wrapped myself around the front of their boat) and deposited me back by the raft. No fatalities. In fact, it was rather exhilarating, once I snorted and snuffed, got all the river water out of my nasal cavities and massaged my contacts back into place.
There was a nice stretch where the current was strong, but there were no rocks or rapids, and Jane invited us to hop out of the boat and swim if we chose. So over I went. We were already wet and the sun was blazing, so it felt good to get into the water. The banks of the Nile on the Uganda side are simply gorgeous: green and lush like jungle scenes, with lots of naked kids swimming and bathing and women doing laundry and men fishing, some with nets and a giant plunger that they use as a “fish scarer” to frighten the fish in the direction of their nets.
The trees were alive with birds: malakite kingfishers with iridescent wings and brilliant orange beaks, darters, who swim virtually submerged, spear fish on their beaks, then emerge snake-like to loosen the fish from their beaks and snap it up into their air then down their gullets. There were all kinds of birds skimming the water surface in search of fish, little birds using their long toenails to walk on vines and cormorants drying out with their wings spread like those salesmen who keep their wares tucked away in trench coats. We were even lucky enough to see red-tailed monkeys, which I’ve not seen before. So I was watching all of this, floating lazily on my back in my brainbucket and lifejacket. Down the Nile. I was floating down the Nile!
We got back in the boat, paddled for a long while and chatted over a snack of pineapple and biscuits. Before long we could hear the sound of the next Class Five. We flipped once more, again it felt like an overhand toss of the entire boat. The raft follows two kayakers and a “safety boat,” who are meant to rescue people who go over. The safety boat is merely a raft with all sorts of first aid equipment and amazingly, one person rows the thing down the river and through all the rapids. How they manage it alone, and perched up on water-proof boxes of pineapples, biscuits and bandages is beyond me. Moses, the guy who was rowing the safety boat, plucked me from the water after our second flip. And I do mean plucked. One minute I was in the water, the next thing there was this giant jerk on my lifejacket and I was half in the boat. (I was so surprised, I lost my balance and fell out again.) I got back in and managed to rescue my contact, sitting primly on my cheek below my right eye.
And away we went. We hit another rapid and managed to stay in the boat, giving ourselves a high five with our oars. We hit one at one point and I felt my thumb pop, but after a few minutes the pain went away and it was back to paddling. (There’s an awful lot of paddling, as the course covers 25 kilometres, so I feel a bit sore today. Actually, very sore. Like an out-of-shape 29 year old on an all-carb diet.)
We portaged the Class Six, walking over piping hot rocks and baked dirt to get around the worst of the falls. Then we were back in the boat, there was a final pep talk from Jane about “going down the middle” and hitting whatever came at us and we’d just see how we did. Not far into it, as we were crouched down in the boat, a massive wave came down on us and we were all popped out and into the air like so many pennies. I got caught up under the boat, which can be an alright place to come up, but is super scary, because you can’t see the difference between the dark of being under water and the light of being back in the oxygen, so it’s difficult to know when to breath. Plus, I was being knocked around quite a bit, as we all fell in the same spot and were bashing into each other with bodies, helmets and paddles. I was rescued by a kayak again and when I got back into the boat face-first, water came streaming out of my nose. Nasal flushing.
It was only later that I realized my thumb had been bent again and it’s still paining me. I think I sprained it, or my wrist, which also hurts a bit. My neck feels like I slept upside down and my arms are like little pathetic strings of spaghetti. (I was so shaky I wasn’t sure I was going to make it back to the truck. Too much adrenaline.) I’ve got a big, big bruise on my upper arm and another near my elbow and a third-degree burn from my friend, the sun, on my right arm.
But I’ve also got the memory of floating down the Nile. And that makes it all worth it.
Eventually it was decided that the river begins from Lake Victoria, which is bordered by Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya. Nearly 7,000 kilometres from Uganda to Cairo. That’s a lot of water. Imagine how powerful that must be coming from the source… Imagine the whitewater. Imagine the tourist potential.
Jinja is the place to be if you’re interested in rafting, so I rode out on Saturday morning with Jason, an HIV doctor and avid kayaker, who was reading a book about hot-dogging moves that are popular on the “squirt boat” rodeo circuit. One contained a description about what can happen when the move goes awry: nasal flushing. By the end of the day, I’d become intimately acquainted with the term.
Whitewater rapids are graded on their degree of danger and difficulty. A one is flat, moving water, while a six is technically unrunnable, in the sense that you would be unlikely to survive it. Niagara Falls, for example, is a class six rapid. The Nile whitewater route in Jinja has three class five rapids and one class six. It’s one of the world’s wildest whitewater routes, but as our guide, Jane, explained, it’s also one of the most forgiving. It’s big and intimidating, but it’s not very rocky and has good, deep warm swells, meaning even if you get dumped, you’re unlikely to go into shock or bash against a rock in the process.
We were corseted into our lifejackets, had brain buckets snapped on our heads and started out, just a few hundred metres up from the hydro electric dam. Jane put us through our paces, teaching us how to paddle (arm straight, use your body, don’t twirl your paddle and whatever you do, keep your hand on your T-grip or you’ll end up knocking out someone’s teeth) and what to do on her command. Forward meant we paddled, backward meant we back paddled. Jump right meant those on the left leapt to the right side to stop us from hurtling into a rock. Get down meant crouch down in the boat, up on your feet with one hand on the rope and the other hanging on to your paddle. We were to stay on our feet or face bashing our knees or spines against the rocks. Stop was my personal favourite of the commands. It meant take a break.
Jane had me demonstrate how to get back in the boat in the event of a spill or a flip. The water was surprisingly warm, but my re-entry was pathetic. And not at all graceful. I was wearing my favourite pants, the black drawstrings that have seen me through half a dozen countries and all sorts of crazy stunts. I nearly lost them once or twice in water that had a curiously strong current.
We passed the first rapid without any problems, then faced our first class five. I must have been looking rather grim, as Jane told me not to worry, that even if we dumped, we would just get back in the boat. “Downtime,” or time spent churning under the water at a rapid, is usually no longer than 10 seconds, but imagine, for a minute, that you have no sense of up or down, you’re scared of hitting rocks, things are bashing into you, the water is pushing and pulling, your paddle is waving wildly and you’ve got water up your nose. Suddenly 10 seconds feels like an awfully long time. Don’t worry, Jane told us. Just curl yourself up in a ball (to save your arms, legs and feet from rocks) and wait for your lifejacket to do its job. You’ll pop up. Take a short quick breath and open your eyes. Figure out where you are and where you’re headed. If you’re near the boat, swim to it. If you’re near a safety kayak, swim to it. If you’re near vegetation, get away from it and get away quickly. It’s got a lot of roots underneath and they’ll gladly get you tangled up and before you know it, your downtime is dangerously long.
So. The first class five rapid. Massive. The only thing bigger is unrideable. Jane tells us all about it, how there’s rocks here and rocks there but we’re basically going to go right down the middle, hit the hole and surf out of it. We should be able to stay in the boat. In truth, I am not really listening to any of this and all of the rapids begin with this same speech, about how we’ll do this and do that. What happens is actually quite different, so whether I listen makes no difference. I am concentrating on not giving away the fact that I am Class Five Freaked Out.
We paddle forward, then power forward, water roaring and crashing and the turning and swaying. Then (apparently) we surf for a while and then the wave decides it’s had enough of us and flings us into the air. One minute we’re following the command to “get down!” and the next thing I know, I’ve got water up my nose and am being thrashed around. My brain is thinking: “don’t panic, don’t panic” but the rest of me is thinking: “I’m dying! I’m dying!” I sprang up – it was probably no more than three seconds but felt much, much longer – gasped for air, opened my eyes and saw a huge wall of water. Smash! Another snoutful of water, a few more seconds of thrashing around. Then… nothing. The kayakers came over, scooped me up (and by that I mean I wrapped myself around the front of their boat) and deposited me back by the raft. No fatalities. In fact, it was rather exhilarating, once I snorted and snuffed, got all the river water out of my nasal cavities and massaged my contacts back into place.
There was a nice stretch where the current was strong, but there were no rocks or rapids, and Jane invited us to hop out of the boat and swim if we chose. So over I went. We were already wet and the sun was blazing, so it felt good to get into the water. The banks of the Nile on the Uganda side are simply gorgeous: green and lush like jungle scenes, with lots of naked kids swimming and bathing and women doing laundry and men fishing, some with nets and a giant plunger that they use as a “fish scarer” to frighten the fish in the direction of their nets.
The trees were alive with birds: malakite kingfishers with iridescent wings and brilliant orange beaks, darters, who swim virtually submerged, spear fish on their beaks, then emerge snake-like to loosen the fish from their beaks and snap it up into their air then down their gullets. There were all kinds of birds skimming the water surface in search of fish, little birds using their long toenails to walk on vines and cormorants drying out with their wings spread like those salesmen who keep their wares tucked away in trench coats. We were even lucky enough to see red-tailed monkeys, which I’ve not seen before. So I was watching all of this, floating lazily on my back in my brainbucket and lifejacket. Down the Nile. I was floating down the Nile!
We got back in the boat, paddled for a long while and chatted over a snack of pineapple and biscuits. Before long we could hear the sound of the next Class Five. We flipped once more, again it felt like an overhand toss of the entire boat. The raft follows two kayakers and a “safety boat,” who are meant to rescue people who go over. The safety boat is merely a raft with all sorts of first aid equipment and amazingly, one person rows the thing down the river and through all the rapids. How they manage it alone, and perched up on water-proof boxes of pineapples, biscuits and bandages is beyond me. Moses, the guy who was rowing the safety boat, plucked me from the water after our second flip. And I do mean plucked. One minute I was in the water, the next thing there was this giant jerk on my lifejacket and I was half in the boat. (I was so surprised, I lost my balance and fell out again.) I got back in and managed to rescue my contact, sitting primly on my cheek below my right eye.
And away we went. We hit another rapid and managed to stay in the boat, giving ourselves a high five with our oars. We hit one at one point and I felt my thumb pop, but after a few minutes the pain went away and it was back to paddling. (There’s an awful lot of paddling, as the course covers 25 kilometres, so I feel a bit sore today. Actually, very sore. Like an out-of-shape 29 year old on an all-carb diet.)
We portaged the Class Six, walking over piping hot rocks and baked dirt to get around the worst of the falls. Then we were back in the boat, there was a final pep talk from Jane about “going down the middle” and hitting whatever came at us and we’d just see how we did. Not far into it, as we were crouched down in the boat, a massive wave came down on us and we were all popped out and into the air like so many pennies. I got caught up under the boat, which can be an alright place to come up, but is super scary, because you can’t see the difference between the dark of being under water and the light of being back in the oxygen, so it’s difficult to know when to breath. Plus, I was being knocked around quite a bit, as we all fell in the same spot and were bashing into each other with bodies, helmets and paddles. I was rescued by a kayak again and when I got back into the boat face-first, water came streaming out of my nose. Nasal flushing.
It was only later that I realized my thumb had been bent again and it’s still paining me. I think I sprained it, or my wrist, which also hurts a bit. My neck feels like I slept upside down and my arms are like little pathetic strings of spaghetti. (I was so shaky I wasn’t sure I was going to make it back to the truck. Too much adrenaline.) I’ve got a big, big bruise on my upper arm and another near my elbow and a third-degree burn from my friend, the sun, on my right arm.
But I’ve also got the memory of floating down the Nile. And that makes it all worth it.
posted by Palmer in Africa at 2:21 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home