Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Finding Balance in the Waters of the Nile

A lot has transpired since my blog in late June. I have now been in Africa for just 6 weeks, my boda boda wound is almost totally healed and Freddy received an anonymous, threatening phone call.

Yes.

In an attempt to scare him out of his human rights work, an anonymous caller phoned him at midnight one Saturday, and told him that he is humiliating the government.
"Which government, caller," Freddy implored?
"It does not matter."
Just before Freddy hung up on this person, the caller threatened to deliver the meat of Freddy's family to him.

Heady stuff. But, as I learned over the course of the following 5 days, somewhat common stuff in the land of human rights. And since I'm from the land of small town journalism, documentary filmmaking and, oh, that's right, America, I'm not so used to the commonality of a threatening (and benign?) phone call.

Freddy let me know that this happens often and that he was not frightened. In a move that shows just how much I value my own hide, I was frightened--for me. Somehow, I could accept the rationale that Freddy was feeding me about his status: "I'm not worried. They don't call if they are going to attack. They just attack." Case in point: he's been mugged and arrested on 3 separate occasions, each time having no warning whatsoever. So, his logic about not being frightened was not hubris. But, what about the bystanders? The folks he works with? Me?

In the end, this served as a tremendous learning experience. I spoke, at length, with members of Amnesty International, The Advocacy Project and with a Regional Security Officer (RSO) at the U.S. Embassy here in Kampala. All of them agreed on a few things: a) the decision I make, whatever it may be, is mine, b) that as long as I remain vigilant, I should be fine and remain out of danger, and c) the risk, for all of us (Freddy, Pascal and me), after being thoroughly assessed by the staff at Amnesty, is extremely low.

So, I sat with this information for a few days. And I sat. And I brooded. And I found myself constantly looking over my shoulder to see if anyone was following me. A few times, I double-timed it down the road when I thought someone had been going in the same direction as me for too long.

And then, my friend Jenny reminded me: "Aren't you going to Jinja this weekend?"

In all the hubbub, I had totally forgotten. We had discussed it earlier the week before, but then this new event arose and, well, all my brain cells went into overdrive and focused entirely on my safety.

But, Jinja. Away from Kampala. Away from threatening phone calls. Away from people who may see me everyday.

Yes, Yes, YES! I must go to Jinja! I got on the Internet, booked a weekend at the Nile River Explorers Campsite (just along Bujigali Falls), and made plans to tag along with Jenny and her mum on the drive out (a 2-hour Matatu trip from Kampala to Jinja Center).

Fulfilling the First and Second Tiers of Maslow's Hierarchy

Lo', was it a-m-a-z-i-n-g.

I have never felt more frightened, more clueless and more alive in my life! I knew that I was going white water rafting. I knew that my cousin, LJ, had done the same in North Carolina not too long ago. And I knew that he had almost drowned. But, because I did virtually zero research on what I was getting myself into, and because I was desperate for a reprieve from Kampala and work, I did not even give it a second thought. In fact, as recently as the weekend I left for Uganda, my dear friend, Ritch, went river tubing (not even rafting), lost his favorite hat and almost drowned, as well! Both he and my cousin bid me to have fun on the Jinja trip, but, more imploringly, TO BE CAREFUL!

I still didn't believe them ;) I was just so happy to be in a new location with new people, where I could feel safe and calm.

Come Saturday morning, after a great night's sleep, we embarked on our bus ride to the banks of the mighty White Nile. Once there, we were directed to remove our shoes: "Unless you are assured that they will not come off in the rapids, take 'em off now," hollered one of the ripped, Aussie guides! So, we all left our shoes, our belongings (no cameras on this trip!) and our fear behind in the vans that we had taken to the riverbank.

Next up: meeting Juma, our intrepid, hilarious, well-known rap star (kids on the river banks screeched at him to sing to them, which he did!), Ugandan river guide. The motley crew that assembled at the base of his raft: 3 American women, myself, Heather and Liz, all in Uganda to work at NGOs; a Canadian woman, Meagan, doing the same; an Ethiopian woman, Seble, who lives in Kampala as a political refugee (who, it also turns out, had never swum a day in her life); and a deaf, British man, Ian, on holiday.

Heh.

We proceeded into the boat, as did about 65 other crazy souls into 9 other boats, after a brief introduction (and Tim, the head Aussie guide, let Juma know that Ian, our British raft mate, was deaf). At that point I appointed my self de facto interpreter. My sister, Abby, has a degree in ASL and spent one full year studying British sign language at Manchester University in Manchester, England. Some of it must have rubbed off on me, right? ;) Of course, in the end, we relied on lip-reading more than sign language to get us over the rapids in one piece.

At the outset of our boat ride, all of us shoeless, swathed in unflattering, super-buoyant life jackets and hilarious pink, black and blue helmets, the waters were calm and lovely. After extracting Seble gently out of the boat and placing her in the water like a new leaf, Juma proceeded to dump the rest of us, rather unceremoniously, into the cool, refreshing waters of the White Nile. We learned the basics of how to return to the boat, (those of us with no upper body strength got dragged in by the tops of our life jackets!), how to negotiate under the boat if we were trapped after a flip, how to stay with the boat after we were safely out from underneath and how to retrieve a rope line if staying with the boat was not an option. This was all practiced in calm waters. ;)

Back in the raft, we were taught how to row, how to "Get Down!" and how to go forward and backward. Every few minutes, from my perch at the front of the boat, I would turn to Ian behind me, and explain to him the basics of what we needed to know. Whether he was simply fearless or courageous, I am not sure, but his serenity and comfort with knowing he might be tossed about in the rapids of the Nile was actually quite reassuring.

Meagan, my mate at the helm, was struggling with the transition between drunk and hang-over, as she had only rolled into our banda around 5:30 that morning. We woke her a mere 2 hours later. Needless to say, our chances at not flipping were slim.

Our first few rapids were joyous! Grades 2 and 3, we whooped our way along the frothy waves and, after completing each headlong venture, we raised our oars in the air and, replying to Juma's call, "What do we say?!" we shouted with unrestrained glee, "We are the Winning Combination!!"

And then we sauntered into a Grade 4. And Ian and I were flipped and tossed and bandied about by the great torrents of water. And I smiled the whole way down. The water was deep enough, I kept my toes pointed high toward the sky and I met up with my savior for the day, Koa, one of about a dozen kayakers who always, always take the rapids first and then wait patiently to shoot into rescue any straggling swimmers who have been tossed overboard. As I straddled his kayak (in the missionary position), we chatted about how I was doing, and how much fun I was having. He gently paddled me back to my boat, where I was grabbed by my life jacket and hoisted back into the frying pan.

Lunch came next, with an interesting vision before us: a young woman, in one of the other rafts, was passed out and shaking uncontrollably. Her face was sallow, almost green. And no matter what the guides did to try to revive her, she simply flopped about like a rag doll. This helped to re-instill some of the fear I had originally left behind with my belongings and my shoes in the van at the shore. The safety boat came and retrieved the young woman and took her safely to shore (and, later, to the hospital).

We ate our pineapple, watermelon and biscuits and talked about what we had gone through. Heather and I were particularly cocky about our successes (even with me and Ian getting dumped on the Grade 4). All of us reapplied sunscreen, as the equatorial sun was hitting us twice as hard as usual--once from the sky and twice from the reflection in the murky waters. We finished our meals and began rowing again, somewhat apathetically, as the waters were so calm they weren't aiding our movement. Slowly, we made our way to the next rapid: a Grade 5 of rocky waterfalls: "Outatime."

We paddled for about 2 kilometers, so Juma had time to psyche us right out of our minds.
"This is the only rapid that you should not fall out of the boat. It is extremely shallow and rocky and there are 2 major falls on the way down." Heather and I exchanged wary looks.

"I'm going to, almost immediately, holler for you to get down and then I'm going to yell, 'Lean right!' Everyone on the left of the boat MUST lean as far right as possible. Those on the right, just lean like you always do. Keep your heads down! If you don't, your necks will bounce and you'll break your teeth."

And, whatever you do, do not get on your knees when you get down! You will, I guarantee you, lose your knee caps!"

After hearing all of this, I finally realized that Ian needed to know what had been shared. I tried my best to explain it, and gave him the highlights. As I was doing this, we approached the falls, only to discover that ours was the last raft to arrive. As we normally went 4th or 5th through a rapid, we just casually pulled up to 5 or 6 boats--at the front of the line. None of us was prepared for what came next.

We went first.

Juma apparently got a signal from the leader that we did not see. Suddenly, with me and Meagan in the front hot seats, Juma screamed, "Hard Forward! Hard Forward!" I dug in and hoped like crazy that we knew what we were doing. The first fall was about a 7 to 10 foot drop. As we went over it, the raft was canted at an awkward, sideways angle. We were not approaching head-on. The raft dumped down to the next level, and with that dump came an incredible "bounce" that shot me sky high and into the shallow, rocky, churning waters. I can just barely recall holding onto the rope that rings the raft, and thinking, in that millisecond, "Do I want to stay with this bulky, uncontrolled boat or do I want to just go with the flow?" As my body plunged into the torrents of the Nile, I felt the first of many rocks dig into my backside. As I gulped in my first of many mouthfuls of water, I had a brief, brief moment of thinking "Why did I let go?," followed shortly by someone (Meagan? Juma?) screaming, "Feet UP!!! Feet UP!!!!"

I kept my eyes wide open, aimed my body into the moving rapids, kept my feet as aloft as one can when one's body is being dragged across the bottom of the Nile, and sucked in a short breath as the next rapid roiled me under it's churning, manic path. At this point, I was still, miraculously clutching my oar, but I could feel that it was impeding me, as I was focusing too much attention on it and not enough on my own bodily safety. It was a no-brainer: I let the rapids drag the oar right out of my hands.

Gulp. I could feel my left hand being sliced open. Somehow, I thought, "Remember, Julie, my knees are okay. My feet are not broken." I felt another rock scrape across the middle finger nail on my right hand. Ow.

But I could see again, and what I saw was not another rapid, but, instead, a blue kayak, madly paddling in my direction.

Koa!


Not Koa, but still a Renegade Kayaker, Bujigali Falls, The White Nile


Only when he got closer to me (or, really, I got close to him) did I realize just how fast I was moving. Fast enough that reaching out and grabbing onto his kayak was much easier to visualize than to do. Fortunately, he had incredible upper body strength. With his long paddle, the force of the Nile and my desperation to live pulling and pushing us together, I managed to swiftly collide and straddle the front of his boat. As we were not completely out of harm's way, he bellowed at me, "Get on the back!" I slid as well as one can, when one has an aching butt, to the back and we tossed our way through the choppy waters to a cove of unmoving stillness.

When I arrived, I was greeted by my fair raft mate, Meagan. She was not, in fact, fairing well at all. A quick look at her showed me an open elbow wound, a bloody hole in her hip and scrapes all over her back. She was hurtin'. I was shaky, too, but I only had a little bit of red on my knuckles--color me Brad Pitt and put me in Fight Club. I helped her to sit on some rocks (slimy green ones) and we waited for a rescue boat to come get us.

I was taken up as a castaway by one of the other 9 rafts. A hearty crew was aboard and sympathetic. Meagan was scooped up by the Safety Boat, a raft manned by one very strong guide who stands atop broad, wooden supports and uses 8-foot long oars to make his way through all the rapids without flipping over.

My temporary hosts were chivalrous and kind and made no mind to the fact that I had thrown my oar to the dogs as soon as I was supplanted from the raft by a large dose of water.
After a bit of a traffic jam and some guide-swapping, I was deposited back with my raft, now tied to the Safety Boat. Meagan was getting first-aid for all of her new holes, and Juma, Alex (another guide) and Tim all took turns trying to cool the ire of me, Heather and Liz, as we stewed over the fact that ours was the only raft to throw rowers overboard (the only people who had stayed in the boat were Seble, Ian and Juma). We knew that Juma had guided us in too soon and too fast, and we needed some sort of nebulous, intangible assurance that it would not happen again on the upcoming 3 Grade 5 rapids we still had to surmount.

In the end, after all our cuts and bruises had been tended to with iodine and band-aids (Tim, as I yelped at the stinging on the back of my hand when the iodine made contact: "I love to make the girls scream."), our raft made its humble way toward the last 3 rapids. Heather and I were particularly scared. We even whined about wanting to stop right at that moment and walk home. But, we knew that was not what we really wanted. So, we approached the rapid. With Meagan now gone, I was at the front with Heather. Juma gave us plenty of prep time, pep talks and advice. Heather and I "Yawped" our way down the rapid, and as we road through the last of the bucking waves, we hollered more than anyone really ever should. "WE ARE THE WINNING COMBINATION!"

We made then next rapid without incident. The last rapid was a super-duper Grade 5 that came at the bottom of a whopping Grade 6. Everyone, including the safety boat, had to get out of the water and walk around the Grade 6 rapids. The boats were Sherpaed over a steep hill and then down to the other side, where, despite the down-grade from a 6 to a 5, still scared us out of our wits to see what lay before us: a whirlpool.

Heather, who was starting to feel the effects of being thrown out of the boat, stooped her way up the hill and realized that her back was thrown out. There was no way she was going to plunge through those rapids. And, Juma made us an offer that we really couldn't refuse: we could take the right-hand side of the rapids, thus avoiding the whirlpool. We would be far less likely to flip. Ian decided to get into a boat that was going to take on the whirlpool. More power to 'im.

So, and then there were 3. Seble, myself and Liz all tiptoed our ways down to the raft, now waiting for us in a cove just in front of the Grade 5 rapid. Juma smiled somewhat warily at the three of us, and we jumped in. I shoved us off, after convincing Liz that she really ought to man the front with me, and we made our way down to the turbulent water.

I felt like a 10 year old, determined to make it and actively ignorant to the danger in front of me: I was going to beat this rapid and I was going to stay in the gosh-darned boat! We skimmed by the right-hand side of the whirlpool, just missing being sucked into its vortex. We bounced. We heaved. Liz flew. And I stayed in the boat. Somehow, Liz managed to hold onto the rope and I pulled her back in almost as soon as she had popped out.

We stroked our way down the last of the waves. We were done. We had made it and lived to tell the tale. As we bobbed around at the end of the rapids, we watched the other, slightly more intrepid (foolish?) rafters go through the whirlpool. Many did not make it, including one poor soul who got sucked in and spun round like a piece of laundry. Somehow, though, they all managed to come out alive. We rescued two of them, both of whom were gasping and panting, amazed that they were still alive.

As I traipsed my way back up the hill to the waiting vans, I realized that my perspective had shifted. So, Freddy had been threatened. It was not good news, but it was manageable. When faced with actual danger, I stood up to it. If I was being followed by shifty people back in Kampala, so be it. I would stay alert and let my natural instincts kick in. Paranoia would no longer be my companion. Instead, I would remain vigilant. But, I would remember to have fun. And laugh. And embrace the life I was living.

The rest of the weekend proved to be quite serene and lovely, as Meagan, Heather, Liz and I nursed our wounds. By the time I returned to Kampala the following Sunday night, I was ready for the next thing, whatever it ended up being. I still am.



The Sun Sets Over the White Nile


Beauty in Jinja