I never thought of myself as a brave person. As a child, it took me forever to go on a roller coaster and I have always had a great fear of drowing, needles, bugs, and snakes amoung other things. Just a month ago when I was at the hot springs it took me a good two minutes to jump on the swing that drops you into the water. But in my time travelling I have learned a lot about fear and my relationship to it. I find myself, weekly, doing things I never imagined I would do. It is a life changing moment when you have something that terrifies you to your core and you just look fear in the eye and keep putting one foot in front of the other.
When I was a kid I spent one summer at water sports camp where one of the activities we did was kayaking. Before we kayaked, the rule was that you had to tip your boat once to practice getting out in that position. I think I was the only one who got away with not doing it because I flat out refused. Being trapped under water is my greatest fear and there was no way I was doing that. I am not sure when I booked my trip to go white water rafting that I fully considered that it could potentially be my greatest fear manifested. I was taken back to that moment in time as a sat in the rafting boat on the Nile and our guide explained that we would now practice what to do when the boat flips. I actually felt like I might throw up as we counted down to the flip, but that paled in comparison to what was ahead.
Flying over rapids and down waterfalls, our boat flipped twice. Both times, in my panic, I gasped and sucked in a bunch of water and therefore came to the surface choking up water as I flew around in the white, crashing waves. I am not sure where I got the strength to continue on but somehow I finished the day: Eight rapids in total.
At the end, we jumped out of the boat and let the current of the Nile float us down to the bus, which was the perfect way to wind down after a terrifying day.
Three days before I went to Jinja, I spent almost a full sleepless night playing out the jump in my head and becoming more and more nervous. I don't know if it was from my experiences rafting the day before or just my change in mentality, but somehow I climbed the stairs and jumped towards the Nile with nothing but a harness and a bungee around my ankles with barely a thought in my head. It was like I was on autopilot and didn't really believe or think about actually doing it until that moment when I tipped off the platform towards the river. It was an amazing rush.
After travelling on my own to Africa, bungee jumping, white water rafting, staying in a room filled with giant cockroaches, getting blood taken in a dirty room with needles all over the floor, rocketing down the pot-hole-filled streets on a boda boda (motorcycle) with three other people and no helmet, and responding to a feeling that our boda driver might be driving us somewhere sketchy by quietly grabbing my swiss army knife and sticking it in my bra "just in case", I somehow feel like I'm not the same person I was when I sat on that plane three months ago in Dar Es Salaam shaking with fear.
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