Uganda

Sorry for the relative delay in posting. After getting back from Uganda yesterday I was exhausted, and the electricity has been out at IU house for awhile.

So, on to Uganda. Wait, first I should say that I watched "The Last King of Scotland" for the first time last week -- about the life of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. This was not a good thing to do just before traveling to Uganda, but I went anyway. Everyone made it back without any major mishaps on the river, so that's a good thing. We left on Friday around noon (which is really 1:30 KT by the time we picked up people at 3 different locations, stopped at the bank, etc). There was quite a large group of us that went -- 5 IU people, 3 Utah people, 4 pharmacy people, 4 dutch people, and our Kenyan friend Ken. We filled 2 cars. The drive from Eldoret to Uganda was on a fairly nice road, so that part of the drive wasn't bad at all. When we got to the border, we first had to fill out paperwork on the Kenyan side to leave Kenya, got our passports stamped, etc. Then we drove across a bridge (that belonged to Kenya? Uganda? No man's land? Kenganda?) to the Ugandan side of the border, where we had to fill out more paperwork to enter Uganda, get our passports stamped again, and pay an entry fee. Which apparently used to be 30 dollars, 20 dollars for students, but last weekend they changed it to a flat 50 dollars for everyone. Great timing, eh.

At the border, as soon as our cars pulled up to the customs areas, we were immediately surrounded by loads of people trying to sell us thousands of things. Bananas, chapati, samosas, cokes, you name it, they were trying to sell it to us. Most of the vendors were kids. After saying no to their bananas, then their cokes, then their chapati, then their samosas (all of them offered them in that exact order, it was like they had a script), then they would start asking us to give them things. Pens and books were popular items to beg for, and when we said no to those, they would ask for footballs, soccer balls, and then drop the whole charade and just ask for money. One thing I will say is that they were quite persistent. They were somewhat disarming in that they were children (dirty, clearly poor children at that), but when you get down to it they were really quite manipulative and knew exactly what they were doing. I had a conversation with a little boy no older than 6 or 7 that went like this:

Little Boy: Can I ask you a question?
MO: Sure.
LB: Are you from America?
MO: Yes.
LB: I heard that your president eats children. Is that true?
MO: Uh... I don't think that's true.
LB: So George Bush doesn't eat children?
MO: I really don't think he does.
LB: Ok.

As hilariously funny as it was, I'm pretty sure that someone (American or otherwise) taught him to say that. And in thinking that's something most American's will find amusing/true he probably hoped I would buy something from him because I found him so funny.

At any rate, the drive from Eldoret to Uganda was only about 2 hours, so the bulk of our 6 hour drive was in Uganda. The scenery was of course, completely amazing, similar to Kenya, but a little flatter I think. I thought it was going to be a great remaining 4 hours, in that the road was by far the best I've yet been on in Africa. But, that was short lived as I should have expected, and we soon started passing ominous signs announcing "Jinja road restoration project, 5 km." And then we happened upon one of the worst roads I've yet been on in Africa (thought NOT worse than the road to and from Kakamega -- that one still wins the grand prize). It was a bouncy 4 hours, and I was quite sore afterwards, though I did manage to protect my cranium a little better than on the last trip. Due the road construction, we had to drive multiple detours on our way, and ended up driving through lots of little villages. Though this meant a longer overall drive, I don't think I'll ever get tired of seeing the various African homes and shops and the people that live and work in them. My favorite thing was this hut -- literally a small, one room hut with an enourmous (HUGE) satellite dish by the front door. The dish was actually larger than the house. I would have liked to see the TV it was connected to. I tried to take a picture, but... bumpy roads...

We got to our campsite in Jinja a little before dark. The site sits on a huge hill overlooking the Nile, so of course the first thing we did was take a ton of pictures of the Nile. Which really, looks like a river. A very LARGE river, mind you, but still a river. But I thought it was exciting, I won't deny it. We got our stuff moved into our rooms -- a large dorm-style room with bunk beds, one for boys and one for girls, got some dinner at the camp restaurant, then hung out at the bar for a little while before turning in to rest up for our big trip on Saturday.

On Saturday morning we were loaded into a large flat bed truck (really quite like a cattle truck) and driven the 15 minutes or so to the main rafting office. There they served us all breakfast (In addition to the 17 of us, there were various other groups doing the rafting trip -- about 60 people in total) and we got to watch a video of some previous rafting trips. Really I think it would have been better not to show us this BEFORE the trip, but no one punked out after seeing it, so I guess that's good. After breakfast, a brief introduction, and picking up our life jackets and helmets, we were loaded back on to the cattle trucks and driven another 15 minutes to the rafting drop site, where we were put into rafts of 7 people.

I was on a raft with Priti, Abby, Ken, Jeremy (pharmacy student), and 2 Dutch girls -- Gwen and Kirsten. Our guide's name was Paolo. After getting into the boat we went over basic rowing, commands, and some safety stuff in a smooth part of the river. Paolo tossed us out so we could learn how to float (not that difficult with a life jacket on) with our feet first and he flipped the raft so we would know what it was like to be under the raft. Well this is all well and good when you're floating lazily down calm water, but it's so much different once you're actually in the rapids.

Soon we came to our first rapid -- a class 5. (Rapids are graded from 1-6, with 1 being hardly more than a dip and 6 being suicidal). About 12 different times I thought we had flipped or were going to flip, but we managed to stay upright. Actually, our boat did very well before lunch, only tipping once, and even then only the people on the left side fell out. After about 3 hours of rafting, we had lunch on the boat, then geared up for the afternoon. Our boat's luck was quite different in the afternoon -- we got dumped at every single rapid. The very first rapid after lunch was called Jaws, and while it was "only" a grade 3, if you hit it just right, it will rocket you out of the boat. Of course we hit it just right, and all of us were immediately sucked down into this churning vortex of water. Now, Paolo had told us that we might get caught in some "minor whirlpools" and if that happend to remain calm and wait for it to spit us out, as we'd waste more oxygen by struggling. We were all stuck in this "minor" whirlpool, and we'd break the surface with only enough time to see the same panicked look mirrored on 6 other faces before getting sucked back down into the water. In reality it probably lasted no more than 30 seconds or so, but it seemed like much, much longer than that. Of all the rapids in the 7 hour trip, it was the only one where I really started to think.... hmm.... am I going to drown???? Eventually, FINALLLY, we got spit out of the rapid, found our boat, our guide, and our fellow rafters, and climbed back in. Quite shaken. We were glad our first falling into the water experience was not a grade 5 rapid, though we would experience that joy soon enough.

Our boat got dumped at least 5 or 6 more times after that, though thankfully the other times I popped immediately up to the surface. One time was even directly over an 8 foot waterfall, even though Paolo told us we wouldn't flip -- we flipped, and we were the only boat that did so. On the course of our 30 km trip down the Nile, we went through 5 grade 5s, 5 grade 4s, 3 grade 3s, a dozen or so 1s and 2s, and we even got to see 3 grade 6s. As in look at only, as you have to be certified (certifiable?) to raft a grade 6. One of the 6s was named "the dead Dutchman" -- I'll let everyone figure that one out for themselves. Needless to say our Dutch counterparts wanted to steer very clear of that rapid. The last 6 was followed immediately by the last rapid we rafted, a grade 5 called "The Bad Place." The rapid was such that it spanned the entire width of the river, so we had to get out and walk around the 6 part to where the 5 began. In the meantime we got to watch to of our Kayaking safety guides raft down the 6. And Holy. Goodness. It was absoutely insane. The 2nd kayaker got stuck upside down in a rapid, so had to kick off the kayak. Down the rapids flew the kayak, and we watched in horror as the water just tossed this guy around and around before he flew down the river, yards and yards away. We found out later that he broke his arm in the process.

After finishing the last rapid, we all hiked (barefoot, mind you) up a huge hill to where the trucks were waiting, and had a long, cold ride back to the campsite. We ate dinner, then got to watch the video of our trip that the company had been filming all day. It was actually quite shocking to watch people getting dumped and tossed about like rag dolls by the river (especially our boat!) and to think... WHY did I just do that??. But, I did by a copy of the DVD so my family can be as mortally terrified as I was :).

I have been white water rafting in the US a couple times, but this was a different experience altogether. The Nile is just so... HUGE, and we've gotten so much rain lateley that the rapids were.... well.... rapid, and just unbelievably enormous walls of water. Coming straight at you, on either side, behind you. But, the company did a very good job. The guides were all very experienced, the equipment in good condition. There was one boat with the most experienced guide by himself -- his job was to go to the bottom of the rapid ahead of everyone else and wait there with the safety equipment (including antivenom for the Nile snakes -- something I'm glad I found out about afterwards). Then the Kayakers would go down the rapid -- about 15 in all-- and every time I fell out of the boat there was at least 1 if not 2 waiting right there for me when I popped back up. But still, at times a rather harrowing experience. I'm so glad that I decided to go, but I don't know if it's something I would ever do again.

It was another early night on Saturday, being exhausted and quite sunburned, then we left about 10 on Sunday morning to commence the bumpy road back to Kenya. We had to do customs in reverse -- check out of Uganda, and back into Kenya, and tell the same children no to the same things they wanted us to buy. Needless to say, after getting rocketed out of a boat a half dozen times, then pulling myself back in, then a long, bumpy ride back to Kenya, I am rather sore today, though I still maintain it's worth the experience I had.

Today was my first day on the adult wards. Priti and I switched for the last 2 weeks we'll be working, just to get the experience of the other side while we're here. I definitely don't like it as much as I like peds (which further confirms my decision to go into peds), though it is interesting, and I'll never see this sort of pathology again, I'm sure. But, I made sure to spend time in Sally Test today playing with my friends; especially Diana and Kevin. Diana and I played a fun game of take-off-my-nametag-and-put-it-on-Diana-then-take-it-off-Diana-and-put-it-back-on-me that lasted for about 30 minutes. And when I walked in Kevin was actually laughing and squealing at the top of his lungs. He looked SO happy, and it was adorable. His walking is much better in just these few short days, and he's getting around very well all by himself now.

Other than that, really just planning on studying for the rest of the rainy afternoon (my boards coming up much sooner than I would like). And yes, it is still raining. Though I am assured by multiple Kenyans every day that the rain will be over "soon." No one can seem to say how soon, though. I think even the weather runs on Kenyan time.

Kwa herini!