In the Nile

This might look like a simple photograph of me smiling in a scenic place. Look closer and it will become apparent that this is actually a photograph of a highly shocked person who has just drained her adrenals dry. I was twitching, barely standing on jelly legs, and giggling like a maniac. If you are medically minded or strongly imaginative, you might be able to pick out the shapes of bumps emerging from the back of my head. I decided to break with habit and instead of sitting myself on a bus or at a table, sat myself in an inflatable raft and allowed myself to be conducted into a series of terrifying rapids. This photo was taken just after clambering to dry land from the rapids below. Yes, I went white water rafting at the source of the Nile. Feel free to skim through this as it will undoubtedly be a fecund source of anecdotage for the rest of my life and will probably get more exciting as time passes.

Liability laws are obviously a bit laxer in Uganda as people like me with no rafting experience can be taken into Grade 5 rapids after a half an hour of training. Seven novices in a raft and one guide in charge of morale, steering and safety. No one asked me whether I could swim! Somehow, the folks at Nile River Explorers have a perfect safety record, due to amazing guides and chaps who hover around the rafts at the rapids in kayaks all set to grab the hapless when the boats flipped.

I ate a chapatti and egg for breakfast watching phwoar video footage from previous trips, all the while becoming more apprehensive. I doffed a helmet that was worryingly covered in dints and a lifejacket buckled so tightly as to impede comfortable breathing and got into a boat for six hours of high drama. Miraculously, my boat didn’t flip on the first couple of rapids, we just leapt inexplicably over the great heaving waves and carried on down the river. So far, so exciting. Our luck changed, and the boat started to flip in huge, terrifying rapids, the sucking maw of the river swallowing the boat and all passengers again and again. I haven’t been so frightened and exhilarated in a long time. The Nile flushed through my every orifice at great speed; too much of it is still lodged in my system. I did an uncharacteristic amount of yelling. Indeed, I discovered in myself new depths of profanity each time I surfaced, astonished to find myself not only able to breathe but to curse the gods. I really didn’t know that I had it in me. Moses must have bobbed in his basket along a calmer section of the river. That, or divine intervention is very helpful.

I chose not to buy the DVD of my rafting experience so none of you will have to sit through half an hour of thrills and spills. Inevitably, others who went rafting with the same crew did and they uploaded the clips to youtube.

What I did was just like this… but with more carnage. Seriously, this was me.


Even after eating and sitting on dry land for an hour, you will note that the mania hasn’t really calmed. I found myself having to drink quite a lot of Nile Special in order to calm myself.Anyway, I’m now totally extreme. I am aching all over after being hurled into the water so many times. I have bumps on my head and bruises all over my legs and a whole world of muscular sore. In spite of all this, I rate the day as rather marvellous. There is a dam being built at Bugajili Falls, one of the many rapids I stacked through, so the rapids closest to Lake Victoria will have disappeared in six months. Not so good for the rafters, but probably good for the Ugandans who will have electricity if everything goes to plan.

In other news, I spent an hour inside the largest thatched hut in the world (that housing the Kasubi royal tombs) and saw the first sliding door in Kampala, dating from 1938. The fun never stops, I tell you.