Jinja

We went to Jinja on Lake Victoria this weekend. This is the source of the Nile River. I went white water rafting with our friend Elena, a medical student from Penn, while Ann explored town with our roommate Sheida, another medical student from Penn. It was my first time rafting, and I have to say it was quite an experience. Drifting 31km down the Nile was pretty amazing. The rapids were quite intense, with the majority of them ranking class 3 to 5. We spent some time swimming in the river when it was calm, so I'm looking forward to taking some medication for the likely schistosomiasis that I now have. We saw a lot of interesting wildlife including a monitor lizard, a baby crocodile, an otter, and all kinds of birds. It's the rainy season and of course it started raining after lunch. At first it was fine, but then it turned into a torrential downpour with strong winds. Honestly felt like a hail storm. We couldn't even see the other rafts in the river for a while. We ended up making our way to some rocks on shore and propping up our raft while we huddled underneath. Our Ugandan guide, Roberto, was quite freezing. I'm used to worse. When the other rafts caught up to us we ventured back out as the wind had died down soon followed by the rain. The ride back to Jinja was pretty bumpy and slow. We had an altercation in the middle of a small village's marketplace where there was only room for one lane and another car wasn't going to move out of our way. It took like the entire village yelling at him (as well as a "bump" from our truck) to get him to move. Quite a scene. I nearly ruptured my bladder, but luckily a few people begged enough for the driver to pull over allowing nearly the entire truck of people (30?) an opportunity to pee in the ditch and/or bushes. Ann spent money in town...she'll have to post to let you know about her experience.

The drive to Jinja was interesting. It is about 1.5 hours from Kampala on a good day going through rural Uganda and a rainforest. Driving here is crazy and It definitely requires your full attention (if you're the driver). People just kind of do whatever they want and people on the road usually accomodate you.
Friday was Ugandan Independence day, so a lot of people are on holiday this weekend. We had Friday off and spent it celebrating Elena's 30th birthday. Ate dinner at a very tasty Indian restuarant with some local Ugandans that we have met. Later drank wine and socialized at Elena's place, which is a beautiful house with a huge veranda (porch?) up on one of the hills in town. She's staying with an expat family that owns a gold mine in Uganda, or something like that. Pretty different than some of the slums near wear Ann and I live. The poverty here is very eye-opening. I'm thankful for how lucky we are in the US.

We're still working on internet and photos. I feel like we're back on dial-up in the early days of the internet. I promise we'll get photos soon. Probably a post with entirely photos from everything so far...