This weekend was the international Nile River Festival; we had people from all around the world: USA, Canada, Ireland, Scotland, England, Sweden, New Zealand, South Africa, and best of all, local paddlers from our dear Uganda. It has been quite an event, and definitely a great 3 day weekend filled with plenty of competitions: the big air freestyle on the Nile Special, a 45 km endurance race from NRE down to the Hairy Lemon, and another 10 km paddle to Silverback followed by a boda-boda race back to NRE (of course the finish line for this race was through an obstacle course of rafts and a funnel of the sponsoring Nile Special beer for the final touch). The best score of all 3 events was the big money maker and the men’s champion was Ibra, our local Ugandan. It was great to watch him take home $2,000 as the grand prize. It was a good turnout though: there were about 40 men in the freestyle with fewer in all 3 events, and 12 women (I think it is the biggest female turnout yet).
It was a fun weekend filled with plenty of worldwide kayakers and lots of locals here to compete and support the event. The flat water in the 45 km race was pretty entertaining, but luckily this part of the festival was done in partners, so Anna and I kept each other laughing and motivated throughout our 3:29:24 sprint. Good times. The best part is that CDC had a table at the finish line and they were waiting for all the dirty kayakers’ blood to test for S. mansoni (bilharzia). They are working on a study to see if S. mansoni is here in Uganda and were very surprised when I told them we had a case of S. mansoni at our clinic the week prior. We have 2 malaria outreach sessions this week and a meeting with AIDS Information Center in Jinja to discuss continuation of free HIV testing in secondary schools around Jinja.
Check out Jaime's write-up on the Festival at http://www.kayaksession.com/nile-river-festival.php
