I gripped the wooden plank on our boat chugging steadily along on Lake Victoria praying that we didn’t capsize. The water was choppier coming back from the bike tour than going. I was explaining to the group my fear of large bodies of water, when Professor Monica Swahn leans over and says, “Just think of it as a dishwasher.”
We all fell silent. I was quiet for a second to consider her words, hoping to gain a bit of comfort while being splashed sporadically from the larger waves. I loosened my grip on the plank to look at her, “…what?” I asked. I couldn’t help it. That made no sense. We all burst out laughing. By the time we were done I couldn’t tell if it was tears of laughter or more water splashed from the lake on my cheeks. Professor Swahn said, “It didn’t make sense, but it got you to think about something else.” She was right.
As a group, we completed a pretty difficult day with laughter, support, and comfort. We did a boat ride from the shore of Kampala across Lake Victoria to a more rural part of Kampala. Once on the other side, we rode bikes for 12 Kilometers (which actually turned out to be closer to 10 miles) up a really tough trail. Now when I say tough, I mean TOUGH. The trail was uneven with about 6 inch trenches in some places, maybe deeper. During the first decline that I came across, I was coming down fast trying to keep the bike steady as it rode over bumps and dips. I remember thinking, “This is it. I’m going to go flying off this bike and end up in a ditch.” But thankfully, that didn’t happen. However, the next steep decline I was faced with I hopped off and walked my bike down instead.
One of our other group members wasn’t so luckily. She hit a big rock on a steep decline causing her to fall off the bike and get a pretty bad scrape on her arm. But we have a nurse among us and luckily she was able to clean and bandage her up.
On the trail, we naturally split up into four main groups: the fastest group, the group that was somewhere in the middle, the group picking up the rear on the bikes, and the group that decided to walk the trail instead of bike ride. Dr. Kim White told us before we left for Uganda that the trail would be a struggle for her. It didn’t seem that way because she was at the front of the fastest group. She was a BEAST. We were all so impressed with how she finished that trail.
It started to rain about halfway through the trail which caused puddles and thick mud. But we trudged upward and onward and didn’t leave anyone behind. The group that walked was even offered shelter from the rain by some residents that lived in the small houses that lined the trail. They couldn’t understand each other all that well, but I guess needing shelter from the elements is universal.
At the end of the trek we finally made it to our destination! The Lakeside Escape, where we spent the afternoon eating lunch and relaxing by the pool. It was beautiful. We were able to recap with each other and share our experiences while on the trail. We had broken seats, faulty pedals, slipped gears— basically anything that can go wrong on a bike trek, but by the end of it we were smiling and happy.
I can only imagine the sight of us as we pulled up to the dock, back on the other side of Lake Victoria. Loud, laughing, and cheering for our driver Geoffrey who we spotted waiting for us at the pier. This experience made us closer as a group, gave a depth to Kampala that I didn’t know it had, and made me really appreciate the group of people that flew across the world to share this experience with me.