I’m sitting in an eight-person inflatable raft in the middle of the Nile River in Uganda, near the town of Jinja, two hours east of the capital Kampala, and I am about to voluntarily plummet over a waterfall and surf down grade-four rapids. I have no idea what grade-four rapids are, but they sound serious.
The water is bathtub warm and the humid, African air rises to form dark, muscular clouds that give our passage downstream a rather ominous lining. There’s electricity in the air and not just because it’s the stormy season.
To add to the tension our Scottish guide Dave has just calmly run through the various ways in which we could die. I’m surprised to learn that neither the rapids nor the waterfall is on top of the list. “Look around at the people in the raft,” says Dave. “Your most likely injury today will come from being whacked over the head by someone’s paddle.”
Fair point, but personally I’m more concerned about the incredible fingernails belonging to the fashionable young Iranian woman who’s sitting behind me. They look like they could puncture the rubber raft.
I shuffle forward a bit, happy to take my chances with the waterfall…
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