Week 8 - The 145 ft. Jump

Location: Kampala

One thing I know for sure is that Uganda has emboldened me. This was revealed this weekend when we went to Jinja for white water rafting and bungee jumping. I must preface this post by noting that I am terrified of heights yet somehow I developed enough courage to plunge 145 feet down into the roaring Nile. After an entire afternoon rafting followed by close to ten hours of deep sleep, we woke up to a new day of adventure. The jump was set for 9:30 and I could barely hold down my breakfast in anticipation. After having mounted a daunting set of stairs, I stood at the top of the platform and watched as one by one my classmates made the leap. As it inched towards my turn, panic set in. Creeping towards the chair, at which point the towel/rope combination would be attached, I glanced over the edge which revealed a 44 meter drop. A few weeks back, the morning of Ssese trip, we spent a relaxing day by the pool side. There were three diving platforms of increasing height. Even though the highest couldn't have been more than fifteen feet from the surface of the water, the jump was intimidating and I barely had the courage to do it. Now, staring down into the Nile 145 vertical feet away made the fifteen foot jump look easy. Probably the scariest part of the whole experience was hopping towards the edge with your feet bound, and then edging even closer with nothing to hold onto. In theory, there's a bar above the edge that one should hold to facilitate the process of reaching the edge. However, I was too short to reach it and therefore had nothing to rely on for support. I had hardly enough time to collect myself before the countdown began...3...2...1....it's hard to believe that I actually jumped. Even looking back at on the moment and watching the video over and over again, I still feel jittery and my heart still races. The first twenty feet was a complete blur, and the stomach drop only set in after falling halfway down. I think that's when the realization of falling actually kicked in. Then the rope retracted and I soared up, then down, then up, then down again. The experience was amazing, definitely a moment of my life that I will continue to relive with the solid satisfaction of having had the courage to take the leap.