Death By Water

White water rafting the Nile- I think I highly recommend it! A couple of the girls from our team are leaving today so we decided to do a team building experience which was rafting the Nile. I thought from my couple of years of going down the Colorado/Green River that I would have ample amount of experience for the rapids we were goint to encounter- I was WRONG! When I go rafting back at home we have river guides that take us down the whole way and we just sit there. Oh no, this time it was one Ugandan river guide and the seven of us Muzungos (white people) with oars . . . not a good idea!

The white water rapids are like any others I have seen. THEY ARE HUGE- jaws of death if you may. I wanted to chicken out, but I figured how bad could they really be if they are letting us paddle. haha . . . The first rapid was a class 5 and the last part of it we dropped of of a waterfall- it was pretty sick. The second one was a class 5 and it looked like huge ocean waves trying to suck us in. I somehow managed to stay in the boat while 3 of my buddies got swept under. I think I was traumatized at this point. In total, we went through 4 class 4 rapids, and 3 class 5 rapids. We flipped our boat once trying to go back and "surf" the class 4 rapid . . . and I am pretty sure I launched out of the boat a few times. . .

At one point we jumped out of the boat and decided to swim the Nile. The water temperature is like swimming pool temperature and the scenery is to die for. I saw a baby monkey, lots of villagers fetching water . . . one naked. . . and just gorgeous folliage. As we were swimming our guide, Nathan, pointed out to us something in the water. We got back into the boat and realized we had been swimming with an alligator. I tried to stay in the boat from then on.

On the way home we road this bus back to Lugazi. The roads started to flood and it got a little hairy. All of the sudden we hit this HUGE bump and since I was sitting in the back I shot up 2 feet, along with the other three girls next to me, and rammed my head into the top of the bus. I honestly thought I had broke my spine or something serious. I couldn't breathe for a bit and I was mainly in shock. I think that I will be ok, but my ribs and the top half of back are pretty banged up. I guess I didn't name the blog Everyday Adventures for nothing!

The work is coming along here. I have been meeting with a man name Richardson who organized ADUA. He served villagers off of Lake Victoria and does a lot of outreach teaching. I am thinking about partnering with him as he goes to these villages. I have one more organization called FREDA, that need to assess as they do about the same thing. I want to compare and contrast their programs and see which one I can be of more help. Both go out to different remote villages and teach people about HIV prevention, hand out condoms, Milaria prevention, pass out mesquito nets, hand sanitization, and so on. Richardson told me that a lot of the villages off of Lake Victoria just have fishing and lumbar as a mean of income. We have discussed putting together a plan for a piggery farm so that they would have one more source of income. It's a really big project and I need some more time to plan and assess.

I have also started working with my friend Kevin, from our team, who is trying to register some local areas for TOMS shoes. We are currently trying to get duty-free status so that when they ship the shoes over we don't have to pay tax. I think today we are going to try and contact the US Consulate to check on our current status. After we that we need to find somewhere local to store 17,000 shoes!!!!!!!!!!!! That's a lot of shoes! Once we get that done we need to go out and gather samples of cases of Jiggers to prove that these poor areas are in need of shoes. And then from there we are supposed to measure 17,000 peoples feet. I think I may just take a sample of like 1700 because its seems insane to measure 17,000 peoples feet. eh?

I have met with a couple other partners regarding projects and there is A LOT more that our team in already in progess of doing. Once I get a more concrete plan on my projects I will let you all know. I hope you are all doing well!

love,

me