One would think that I would be pretty sick of rafting the
Nile by now, but my fourth time was just as fun as the first. Plus, it was great that I could go with my
cousin, Jane. We were lucky to have two
great raft guides, Alex and Elliot.
Elliot was a “trainee” and it was only his second day on the river. That is right, I had rafted the river more
times than one of our guides. A little
disconcerting to say the least. Alex,
however, was great and more than experienced.
He was also hilarious and danced during every rapid. At one point in the day, people got out of
their boats to swim. The boys in Jane’s
group were in a different raft and they swam over to try and pull us in. Alex said, “Hey, boys. If you want to play with my ladies, then you
are you going to have to pay me first.”
We set the tone for a pretty great
day with our first rapid, which is the waterfall. You have to veer to the right in order to go
down the waterfall; otherwise, you will go down the back rapid. We went down and barely missed making it to
the waterfall. However, instead of going
down the left, we managed to get ourselves wedged on a rock. Jane and I were in the front, which was
starting to lean over the rock. We were
screaming and laughing because we were staring face down the rock. Alex yelled, “LEAN FORWARD!” Jane and I, clearly on the same page, leaned
as far back as we could with sheer
terror on our faces. I was thinking to
myself, “There is no way he wants us to go down this sheet of rock. That’s insane. He must have said lean back.” Alex yelled, “What are you doing? I said lean
forward!” Fed up with us, he jumped to
the front of the boat, and we flew down the rock – shrieking the whole
way. The other boats were cracking up
and cheering when we got down. The boys
said that our faces were priceless (pictures to follow).
I have
decided to retire my signature dance move, the worm. I am probably a few years late in making this
decision, but I feel that it is finally necessary. Saturday night, at NRE Campsite, a bit of a
dance party started. One guy started
break dancing, so some people convinced me that I should follow-up and do the
worm. Well, I never back out of a
challenge. Unfortunately, someone had
recently dropped a beer bottle and all the glass wasn’t swept off of the floor.
Down my chin went, straight into a piece
of broken glass. I was bleeding
everywhere! Good thing I was with a
bunch of med students. Jane and Kevin
cleaned me right up and made sure there was no glass left in my chin. They also had some butterfly bandages with
them, which they used to help close up the gaping hole in my chin. Pretty sure I am going to have a lovely scar
once it heals, so maybe I should think of a different story to tell. Suggestions are welcome.
I have said
it before, and I will say it again, being an mzungu is like being a celebrity. When I first got here, I reveled in all the
attention. I was like Miley Cyrus back
in the Hannah Montana days, throwing up the peace sign to all the
paparazzi. One year later, I am more of
the big sunglasses and pursed lips type of celebrity. I used to think it was the cutest thing when
kids would follow me on my run. Now, not
so much. I have been leaving earlier and
earlier to avoid the thirty shrieking children that will inevitably follow
me. The other day, however, I did not
leave early enough. Some older primary
students started to follow me and make fun of me running. I was annoyed and I decided to have some
fun. I turned around suddenly, lunged at
them, and growled. They all stopped like
deer caught in the headlights with looks of sheer terror on their faces. Then they all turned and ran away
screaming. I did not actually think I
would scare them that much, but it
made it that much funnier. Some old
ladies were walking along the road and they could not stop laughing
either. Mission accomplished – I was
able to run in peace.
As many of
you may recall, 700-800 books were taken from the Libraries for Life team at
the Mbale Port. We all sort of figured
most of them would be sold. So I was not
at all shocked when I saw a guy selling some of the books on the side of the
road in Mbale. Caroline and I kept
asking the man, “Are these really
your books?” He kept replying, “Yes! Do
you want? Good price!” We could not stop laughing – like I was
really going to purchase back my property.
Thankfully, I have more than enough books at Namengo. I guess Libraries for Life also helped to
boost the small business sector of Mbale – so many accomplishments.
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