On the momentous occasion of her 32nd birthday, Colleen set off down the Nile.
After the week below, I understand a little better why everyone who rotates through Mulago makes a point of planning many small weekend adventures. It's exciting, of course, but it's also mind-clearing; we spend so much time and emotional energy on the floors of the hospital that it quickly begins to feel like that's the whole Ugandan world. Sometimes you have to look up, smell the milk tea, and launch down a hippo-filled river in a boat full of complete strangers.
All Annapolis kids are river rats to some extent, even those of us who lived on the non-sailboat-having side of the creek. I've become increasingly grateful that we were dumped into water early and often growing up; it makes water a source of fun and relaxation as an adult, rather than a hazard. Dunk your children well.
So off to Jinja! The self-proclaimed source of the Nile, though sticklers (ahemDADahem) may wonder about the Blue Nile; this issue is entirely ignored in the Ugandan brochures. Regardless - the Nile! A sturdy little bus went zooming around Kampala in the early morning on Saturday, picking up our ragtag bunch of rafters: we two Mulago docs, some Pakistani UN workers, four Chinese men with minimal to no English, and six incredibly burly Egyptian men who looked like the Cairo National Rugby team or something. Arms like tree trunks, all of them.
We bounced out of the city through increasingly gorgeous green countryside, littered with red mud brick houses and scrappy-looking goats. Kampala is dry, dusty, and built without any thought to preserving green space in the city; it's eye-opening and rather refreshing to be among lush rolling hills after only 20km or so.
Our rafting guides gave us bananas, stripped us of our shoes and sunglasses ("the Nile takes a tax"), and divided us quickly into three boats. In what later seemed to be slightly ill-conceived, the rugby team paired up with one or two other strong young men to form one boat, while the three women (including Dr. Ueda, who weighs all of 90 lbs) were teamed with the Chinese gentlemen. The language barrier became clear rather quickly ("paddle forward" is actually a pretty advanced English phrase, when you think about it), but the paddling skills barrier took us by surprise. Turns out it's quite tricky to explain to someone in their non-native tongue that dipping the paddle only 2 cm into the water is not effective, no matter how quickly it's done.
But it turns out that none of that really matters anyway. Everything in the river flows downstream eventually, paddling properly or not, so off we went, bouncing backwards over a few rapids, flipping once (!), and generally having a fine time in between rapids drifting through spectacular scenery. My left arm is quite sore and I think I swallowed about a liter of rather questionable river water, but a fine birthday indeed. Feeling ready to face the Oncology ward tomorrow.
After the week below, I understand a little better why everyone who rotates through Mulago makes a point of planning many small weekend adventures. It's exciting, of course, but it's also mind-clearing; we spend so much time and emotional energy on the floors of the hospital that it quickly begins to feel like that's the whole Ugandan world. Sometimes you have to look up, smell the milk tea, and launch down a hippo-filled river in a boat full of complete strangers.
All Annapolis kids are river rats to some extent, even those of us who lived on the non-sailboat-having side of the creek. I've become increasingly grateful that we were dumped into water early and often growing up; it makes water a source of fun and relaxation as an adult, rather than a hazard. Dunk your children well.
So off to Jinja! The self-proclaimed source of the Nile, though sticklers (ahemDADahem) may wonder about the Blue Nile; this issue is entirely ignored in the Ugandan brochures. Regardless - the Nile! A sturdy little bus went zooming around Kampala in the early morning on Saturday, picking up our ragtag bunch of rafters: we two Mulago docs, some Pakistani UN workers, four Chinese men with minimal to no English, and six incredibly burly Egyptian men who looked like the Cairo National Rugby team or something. Arms like tree trunks, all of them.
We bounced out of the city through increasingly gorgeous green countryside, littered with red mud brick houses and scrappy-looking goats. Kampala is dry, dusty, and built without any thought to preserving green space in the city; it's eye-opening and rather refreshing to be among lush rolling hills after only 20km or so.
Our rafting guides gave us bananas, stripped us of our shoes and sunglasses ("the Nile takes a tax"), and divided us quickly into three boats. In what later seemed to be slightly ill-conceived, the rugby team paired up with one or two other strong young men to form one boat, while the three women (including Dr. Ueda, who weighs all of 90 lbs) were teamed with the Chinese gentlemen. The language barrier became clear rather quickly ("paddle forward" is actually a pretty advanced English phrase, when you think about it), but the paddling skills barrier took us by surprise. Turns out it's quite tricky to explain to someone in their non-native tongue that dipping the paddle only 2 cm into the water is not effective, no matter how quickly it's done.
But it turns out that none of that really matters anyway. Everything in the river flows downstream eventually, paddling properly or not, so off we went, bouncing backwards over a few rapids, flipping once (!), and generally having a fine time in between rapids drifting through spectacular scenery. My left arm is quite sore and I think I swallowed about a liter of rather questionable river water, but a fine birthday indeed. Feeling ready to face the Oncology ward tomorrow.
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