Just yesterday, I rafted the NILE!!! And let me tell you, I’ve never been white water rafting before, so I had no idea what to expect. It was incredible…absolutely beautiful, freaky, and exhilarating. I loved every minute…oh, except the seconds I felt like I was drowning underwater, but that’s okay. So, we first got in the raft and our guide was named Charlie. He was a Ugandan who was orphaned and couldn’t find school fees, but he found a friend who took him to learn to be a guide. He had to learn for 4 years, and during that time, he was living off the nile as a fisherman…pretty amazing story. Anyways, we got in the raft with him and he taught our group the basic commands we needed to know before we got going. So, the first one we went down was a grade 4 and it was called Budjagalli falls. Yeah, this picture is the first one we went down, and I definitely got smashed by a wave and was under the water for like 10 seconds which feels like an eternity…but it was good cause I got all the scariness out the first one…We did 4 grade 5 falls which is the highest you can do in a raft…so that was pretty amazing. At one point we went over a 12 foot waterfall. It’s amazing to see just water in front of you and actually land right side up when you come out of it all. I don’t even know how it works. I thought for sure we were going down. Another adrenaline rush is when we were going through the class 5 and it’s so loud and Charlie is screaming, “paddle forward!!...HARD!” and we’re all repeating it to each other cause the water is sooo loud. Man, what a rush. Anyways, another time he had us go down a grade 3 with our eyes closed. He promised us it would be okay, and we all trusted him. We sat on the edge and followed his instructions when he told us to paddle, then at the last minute he screamed “open your eyes” and before us was a huge wave we were headed right into…haha…we didn’t fall out, but it was just a big surprise and so much fun. Another time he told us, “on this next one we can flip or we can have someone else guide us” (which we found out later that means we can flip or we can flip….pretty much no option there)..so, they voted me the new guide, and guess what we did…we flipped. I basically yelled two commands and crouched down as a cowardly guide to as we watched the wave overpower us. Woah. So crazy. Anyways, it was all so beautiful and incredible and NATURAL…all throughout the trip we could look over and see natives either washing or swimming or bathing or fishing in the waters…you really got a feel for how the people LIVE off the nile and it’s incredible to be a part of that and see it firsthand.