So after a solid two weeks of working in the Great Lakes Rehabilitation Centre, treating patients, giving some guidance and advice to the technicians here, traveling to Kabale to open a new prosthetic centre and gaining an insight and understudying in the Jaipur limb, I took a weekend off to free my mind a bit. I headed out to Jinja, the source of the Nile for some white water rafting. There's no way I could travel all the way out to Uganda and not see some of the countryside for a few days. Jinja is about a two hour drive outside of Kampala (if you're lucky with traffic jams) and in an easterly direction.

Got up early and arrived there via the companies bus for about 10, where we got a free breakfast and were kitted out with helmets and lifejackets. We were all paired up into groups of 7 and then driven down to the river. There was an insane number of us who were going, and I think it was more than normal. Actually, there were about 13 boats on the water, whereas they normal have about 3? Anyway, we were all given safety instructions and training on how to paddle, the commands for forwards, backwards, stop, and GET DOWN. Following that we all set off down the river and towards the rapids. Not done it before, but I'm SO glad that I did, its AWESOME!

There are actually seven main rapids that you go down, each totally different from the other and the hardest being a grade 5 (which out of 6 is pretty damn high). We managed to make it all the way down to the bottom without capsizing, though I'm not entirely sure how, since on a couple of occasions we were either going backwards or on our side at the brink of falling out. Once, a guy in another boat flew out and broke his arm by smashing it on a rock and I think a girl either sprained or tore something in her ankle. Nice! About 3/4 of the way through the trip, and whilst we were in a calm section where you just have to paddle for about an hour until you reach the next bit, we were chatting to our Austrian guide and found out that this was actually the very first time that he had rafted down the Nile! Turns out it was fine though because he had Kayaked down it "a few times" and rafted for a company back home. Great. But nobody died, so that's ok then!

On the Sunday I hired a bike too, and was just given a map and sent on my merry way on my own. I cycled down a load of dirt paths and through villages, when all the little kids run out shouting "Muzungu" (white person) and "Give me money". There are some amazing views along side the river and I took a load of photographs. But once again, photos never do it justice...

Back to work tomorrow, and serious work. I'm working in a school of prosthetics and orthotics with huge class sizes.