For the last two weeks since I got to Uganda I have been living in Bujagali, Uganda, by the banks of the White Nile.
My home at the moment is a tent in the campsite is Nile Rivers Explorers campsite. When I arrived at NRE I had been expecting a packed campsite full of kayakers from all over the world. However it turns out that May is the low season and there are not a lot of people around, except when an overland truck comes through every couple of day, which always guarantees a lively night at the NRE bar.
It didn't take long to find people to get on the river with though, and I have had plenty of paddling on the White Nile. The first time I got on the river was with Nini and Erika from Norway to paddle the NRE-Silverback section of the river. It was my first proper experience of big water paddling, and very different to the rivers I've paddled in New Zealand and the UK. My first impression was that it was easier than I expected, as most of the rapids, whilst big, are fairly short and with few consequences, this was a major underestimation of the river, as I found out on Silverback, a slide into a massive wavetrain, which ripped my deck off my boat as I paddled through it. In the last two weeks I have managed to explore a lot of the river but there's still a lot of backchannels to paddle, there really is an amazing variety of rapids and I am looking forwardto finding some new lines and maybe trying some of the most famous and difficult rapids on the river, such as Itanda.
During the week I have been volunteering with Soft Power Health, they have a clinic in Bujagali, just a five minute walk away from the NRE campsite. The first thing you notice is how welcoming the Ugandan people are, walking to the clinic through the village all the children come up to you calling "Mzungu!Mzungu, How are you?" and I often end up with a crowd of children walking with me to the clinic. The clinic was set up a few years ago and employs Ugandan doctors and staff. They do fantastic work treating the local population for all kinds of diseases including malaria which seems to make up almost half of the cases, for prices they can afford, this kind of clinic didn't exist before in Bujagali and attracts people from many nearby and less nearby vilages. As a volunteer I have been based on the clinic, but also going out on outreach prograns into further villages where we sell subsidised mosquito treated bed nets and educate the people how to use them, this means going into villages where very few tourists go and really getting to know the Ugandan people.
Unloading a delivery of bed nets
Annie demonstrating the bed nets
There's also been a surprising amount going on in and around Jinja, including the Great Gorilla marathon, run on the banks of the nile from Jinja to Bujagali in baking heat and with muddy roads, I opted to marshall rather than run but did enter a 5 kilometer race which, run at the hottest part of the day and whilst I was the second place Mzungu (white person) was nowhere near some of the locals.
I have also been experiencing the local culture at a concert for the launch of "Bread and Butter"s new album in Jinja last Saturday night. After pushing our way in to what sounded like a massive party we found most of the locals sitting down appreciating the music (a mix of rap and reggae sung, horribly badly, in Ugandan, with the exception of "Say no to human sacrifice, say no to evil rituals") most of the people were drunken Mzungu's. Despite the music it turned out to be an awesome night out, and very different to anything I'd seen before in Uganda.
