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#10 ....................... A Publication Of SchoolNet Global
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In This Issue
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We get the opportunity to travel to the headwaters of the White Nile in Uganda with SchoolNet Global's man in Africa, Canadian, Stephen Fabian who is studying and doing research in nearby Tanzania. Steve provides SchoolNet Global children with a personal viewof "Darkest Africa" in 2005.
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Upon arrival in Entebbe, we were further surprised to hear that Air Tanzania offers its customers a free transfer ride from Entebbe Airport to their offices
in downtown Kampala!
The temperature is at least twelve degrees cooler than in coastal Tanzania. It was bliss. Kampala is a city of about 1.5 million people and it is spread out
over several large hills. We were struck by the seemingly larger middle class that exists here, as demonstrated by the larger number of nicer homes nestled all over. Kampala has its slums, too, but there seems to be a larger spread of wealth here than in Dar es Salaam (Tanzania). Oh, and there are great, big marabou storks perched everywhere on the rooftops.
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Rafting Rapids On The Nile
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A bus took us to the town of Jinja which sits on the headwaters of the Nile,where the waters of Lake Victoria begin their long descent into Egypt. We made it to the launch site and removed our shoes and left our valuables behind. We boarded our inflatable raft, eight people altogether, and we were off. For the first leg of the river we practiced paddling and what to do should we flip. The day was hot and the river was wide. We made our way successfully over a Grade 1 rapid and everyone was happy. When we got to the Grade 3 one, we flipped. I wondered if John Hanning Speke had a similar experience when he was "discovering" the headwaters of the Nile back in the 1860s. Since we flipped on the Grade 3, it only stands to reason that we should flip on the Grade 5. Our guide told us that this rapid was known as "The Bad Place." Soon 16 people (two rafts) needed to be resued from the Nile. We managed to get back into the rafts and, miraculously, find all the paddles. After another harrowing experience, we finished our trip and made our way up a bank to indulge in a great barbeque feast.
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We made it to Murchison Falls which lies in Northern Uganda - it is the point in the Nile River where the 50 meter wide river is compressed through a 7 meter gorge, so you can imagine the churning and the frothing. Murchison is also a National Park where one can go on safari and see lots and lots of elephants. On our safari drive we saw some animals: a couple of giraffes here, an elephant or two there, some antelope, and a big pod o' hippos. We did see two leopards, but no lions.
The Nile River cruise, on the other hand, was fantastic. We saw four great herds of elephants and, at one point, we surprised one family who had come to the river's edge to take an evening drink. The bulls began spreading their ears, shaking their heads, and trumpeting at us. We also saw tons of hippos and lots of crocodiles.
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Experience with a Hippo
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Until the last night, the only thing we had seen lurking about the camp was a family of warthogs which were lovable in their big headed, little legged ways. Now, there was a full-grown male hippo. He was schnorfling through the grass around the edges of the camp and eventually wound up parking his mammoth self right in front of my banda (hut). As it was fully absorbed in schnorfling, it pretty much ignored us. Like we were any real threat to it anyway. In spite of my new friend, I made it to bed in the end.
But then I had to get up in the middle of the night. Looking out of my window, I saw no hippo. I grabbed my lantern and made my way to the toilets. Minutes later, I returned to my banda and there was the hippo waiting for me. He had parked himself again in front of the hut, but this time it wasn't schnorfling and it was looking directly at me, a dark tall figure holding an annoyingly bright lantern. There was nobody else around. Just me and the hippo. I sort of froze for awhile and assessed the possibilities. Finally, I decided the best thing to do was to simply ignore this thing
which was hard to do when I kept thinking that its jaws had the power to snap me in two, or it could simply trample me into the earth. Well, the hippo did nothing while I tiptoed around it to my door. Once I had shut my door, the funniest thing happened: I looked out my window back at the hippo and saw the thing galloping away into the night. I think I scared it!
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