Been there done that...never again...one trip down the nile is enough for em

(This is something I wrote on Nov 13 but haven´t had a chance to post until now) This past weekend Laura and I once again loaded up our backpacks and set out well before the sun rise, this time we were heading to Uganda for a white water rafting adventure on the Nile. Uganda is an 8 hour bus ride away from Kigali, but the journey can take up to 12 hours when the border crossing and driver’s unauthorized stops for bananas, corn, plantains, and even a quick pit stop to re-weld the door of the bus are taken into account. We stayed in Kampala, the capital of Uganda Thursday night and then headed to Jinja, a small city which borders the head waters of the White Nile for Friday and Saturday.
I may now be sitting in a completely stationary chair in my bedroom as I write this, but the outline of a bus window frame is so seared into my vision that my body can’t relax, It’s still tensely waiting for the next pot hole lurch and mentally bracing for the next time an oncoming freight truck passes so closely to my bus that the two vehicles collectively make a whistling sound, each giant hurtling hunk of metal acting as one side of a pursed set of lips. Oblivious to the total fear of at least one of their passengers… the drivers would happily wave to each other and honk their horns in a friendly salute before going their separate ways. While I’m definitely tired of buses, id love to get back into one of the open air cattle trucks I got to ride in several times over the past few days. The rafting company used them to collectively transport gear and people and there is nothing quite like climbing up the bars on the sides of these trucks and facing into the wind as the country side flashes by. Its defiantly the best way to watch the sunlight appearing over the horizon or watch the darkness rolling in at night
Traveling through another African country was especially interesting after living in Kigali for as long as I have. People keep telling me that Rwanda’s infrastructure is quite advanced and that it is a very clean country when compared to some of its neighbors, and until this trip, I haven’t been able to appreciate how true this is. I was also struck by how quickly the landscape changed from Rwanda’s mountainous ridges to Uganda’s rolling grass lands filled with cattle, and then transformed once again into patches of rain forest as we approached Lake Victoria. I don’t think Winston Churchill was far off when he named Uganda the pearl of Africa. In terms of the people who live in these countries, the noticeable difference is that almost all Ugandans speak English. I often found myself biting my tongue as I’d once again start a sentence in French, or have to remind myself to watch the road instead of eagerly soaking in all of the English words floating past me on billboards and in shop windows as my moto sped by. Kampala’s motos are called bota bota’s and unlike Kigali’s motorcycles, they are not regulated. The advantage of this is that it is common to put three people on one moto, so Laura and I wouldn’t have to stress about loosing one another, but the down side was that helmets weren’t part of the package deal. Unfortunately, this country also has a dark past with the reign of their last dictator still present in dailz conversation. It was also hard to believe that I was in the country of the child solider, the victim of the tyrannical outfit called the lords resistance army which operates in the north of the country. One of its signature moves is to cut of the lips, nose or ears of local villagers to subdue them into compliance.
Kampala was very similar to Kigali except everything was bigger and dirtier. The traffic was rougher, the buildings were taller, and the extreme poverty was a bit more glaringly obvious against the glimmers of opulence visible through the red dust and black smoke that hung in the air. Kampala is also home to a larger Muslim population than Rwanda and its numerous mosques and women with their heads covered bore witness. Visiting the bugandan royal tombs was the first time I’ve been kindly told that women are supposed to wear skirts, and was handed a long sarong to wear over my jeans. All in all Uganda is a bit more what of what I imagined Africa to be like, than the small country I have come to know so well.
Rafting was completely wild. We went over class five rapids which are basically mini waterfalls. I bought a DVD of the trip so anyone who is interesting in watching photage of be flying out of a raft over and over again is welcome to come over when I´m back in Waterloo. I´m happy to be back in Kigali as work is becoming more and more demanding.