Bujagali Falls and Rafting the Nile

26 June 2010

I am proud to say that I have officially gone white water rafting on the Nile River! You probably read that on Facebook, but I just don’t know very many people who have. I didn’t even know you could do that: I thought there were crocodiles and hippos and the like, so you couldn’t feasibly do it. Well, our guide told us that there are parts of the Nile that that is true of, but we didn’t go anywhere near it. We rafted through four class 3 rapids, and were on the river for about 2.5 hours. It was a 15-kilometer trip, and it was quite a workout! They fed us a delicious breakfast before, and an awesome BBQ after (I actually had everything but the meat—side note, turns out I don’t have to eat meat here!) and we stayed the night in rooms at their campground, which was included in their rafting fees. It was a pretty good deal. We went to celebrate the fact that we have made it halfway through the trip, and have only 18 days left before we are in America. It was also a bit of a retreat, and we got to relax. We even had toilets and HOT WATER—that was an unexpected treat!

After the rafting, Tammy, Daphne and I went just outside the campgrounds to where the shops were. They were mzungu price, (higher because tourists come and pay what is asked of them) so I didn’t get anything, but we went through a few shops. In the second shop, an adorable little boy, probably two years old and covered in the red dirt that is abundant in Uganda, came and laid down on the floor and just smiled, sticking his limbs into the air. He was one of the few

Ugandan children that we’d met that was not afraid of mzungus, we learned this was because his mother owned the shop next door. We played with him a little bit, and he followed us to his mom’s store. Then he came and hugged my legs like he wanted to be picked up, so of course I picked him up! He was absolutely adorable, but covered in dirt! We played with him some more, and he followed us to the next shop. He was pretty sad when we took him back to his mom’s store and didn’t understand why his friends were leaving, but this little boy brought smiles to our hearts.

Reading this story from an American frame of reference, you would think that it’s weird that his mother let him wander off. Actually, it’s all too common in Uganda for the children to wander on their own; mothers seem to worry about their children less and providing for their family more. Often, older children (6 and up) will tote around younger ones (1-2 or so). It’s also not uncommon to see three children under the age of 10 walk a few miles to the nearest water pump. If they are slightly well-off, they will have a bike to tote the yellow jerry cans on. If not, their tiny frames will carry the 20-pound jugs both ways.

For those of you who I told we were going on a Safari on the last few days on the trip, the Safari has been cancelled. We don’t have enough funds for it, and we decided that the conference we are putting on July 3^rd is more important, because it feeds both the body (breakfast and lunch) and soul of 15-25 year olds in the community, for free. The conference is relatively inexpensive, considering that we are paying travel fees for the worship group we invited and our one Ugandan guest speaker, as well as all the food costs. Two people from our group will be speaking, Tammy and Jeremiah, and I am acting as secretary, gathering numbers of attendees from the 23 local churches and secondary schools we invited to the conference, as well as fielding any questions these churches may have. Ultimately, our team felt that we should forsake the Safari entirely so that the people of this community could be ministered to through us by God.