Getting Our Adrenaline Rushing in Jinja, Uganda

Written by Andree Nesta Rosen and Liam Russel, 2014 East Africa Discovery.

Jinja, Jinja Jinja. Our stay might have been short but it was nothing short of amazing. We stayed at a lodge called Adrift that overlooked the Nile. Some of us played football (soccer), others explored the downtown area (got lost may be a more accurate description), and others simply relaxed, taking in the beautiful landscape that surrounded us. We couldn’t go too crazy – we had to keep some energy for the crazy day ahead of us. Some of us were actually quite nervous and turns out we might have had reason to be.

We woke up the next morning to be greeted by our white water rafting guide, Matt, who although from England, actually lived in the same town as Kiana for 5 years (small world). We split into two rafts: Adam, Catherine, Jeremy, Kiana, Kyla, Olivia in one, and Andrée, Liam, Linda, and Sarah in the other. I’d like to take a moment to share how incredibly unfair this was seeing as the first raft benefited from 2 guides: Matt and Catherine who became certified just before leaving on this trip. There, the cat is out of the bag!! You’ll be happy to know, Mum and Dad, that no one got hurt and we all made it some 20 km further down the Nile, safe and sound. It did, however, take a lot of ujasiri (courage) to go through most of the rapids we faced.

Almost miraculously, some of us found the energy to make it to a music concert that same evening. What we thought was a small local festival ended up being a massive performance of Uganda’s top artists.

But hold on – there’s more! Since white water rafting really wasn’t exciting enough (I’m out of breath just writing this), half of the group bungee jumped over the Nile! We have a veteran with us (Catherine) but for the rest of us (Andrée, Jeremy, Kiana, Liam), it was our first time bungee jumping. Not all of us kept our cool, but we were all proud of surviving these last 24 hours!

Until the next adventure!

2014 East Africa Discovery