And another week has gone by really fast – only 2 days left here in Uganda...

And the sunny, hot Ugandan weather is finally back after 2 weeks of lots of rain and muddy roads. Managed to get to Superhole for some paddling (together with Jessie last week in a borrowed kayak) and again yesterday. It was really good fun and I worked on my hole moves as on the wave moves – Superhole is just perfect for that!

Due to the heavy rains and crazy muddy roads the clinic was really quiet last week. But it´s back to normal now. And due to the Christmas holidays coming up more and more incredible cases come up every day. People who have been avoiding clinics and relying on local witch doctors now realize that they have to visit a clinic now before the clinic closes over Christmas! And it´s going to be worse for the next 2 days!

Here are some random shots from last week:

The kids at Superhole - always crazy for a picture ;-)

So I had a really good time here in the last 2 months – huge experience from the clinic, making lots of new friends while working there – thank you very much for the lovely time and the warm welcome and all the support! And then there was the kayaking, of course: The mighty Nile, as good as it gets, but threatened by 2 dam projects! One will be just a few kilometers downstream of the Hairy Lemon Island and – if built as intended will only leave 2 rapids for commercial rafting or kayaking on the river. The infamous waves at the Nile Special rapid will be gone too! And the other dam at the Murchison Falls section (Karuma Falls) will destroy another beautiful landscape in Uganda – both of them threatening the Number 1 income generating business here: Adventure Tourism! And expecting the generated electricity to stay in Uganda and help the local businesse grow and prosper is futile – as the Silverback-dam has shown: Electric power is still unreliable and blackouts often last 24 hours or more. And instead of supplying their own country with electricity it is sold to Kenya, Rwanda and Sudan!

For more information go here:

http://saveadventuretourisminuganda.wordpress.com/

So we all hope that there is a chance the government will build a smaller dam so the stretch of whitewater that is here at the moment will be there for future generations of kayakers to explore!

So I´m leaving Uganda on Saturday to go back to rain, snow and freezing weather – and hopefully some snowboarding!

And I´ll definitely be back as soon as possible....

Sunrise on the mighty river - definitly one of my most favourit moments out there!

Another week has gone by and there are only 10 days left for me in Uganda! I´ll definitely be parting with a laughing and a crying eye...

One one hand I really look forward to Winter and snowboarding on the other hand I´d love to stay here longer because of work and the people here and f course because of the kayaking!

I´ve been making quite some progress on the waves of the mighty White Nile – and a big part of this because of all the good advice I got on the weekends! Thank you very much Claire – I definitely had my best and funniest hours on the waves with you! One of it was my first ever Panam – and it is even on the video that was running for after-paddling video coaching! And of course Brendan, Dennis and Paul – thanks very much for the awesome times! Unfortunately Brendan and Paul left on Sunday after an awesome party and Claire and Dennis left the country today. So there is only one weekend left for me to go to the Hairy Lemon and work on my new moves: Panams and Backblunts – but I´ll make the best of it!

The clinic is busier every day and I´ve seen some cases that can only be seen as an even bigger failure in the already quite error-prone Ugandan health care system: a combination of sever malnutrition with a hydrocephalus plus signs pointing to sever malaria with complications equals the worst outcome you can imagine. We still try to help those kids but this feeling of utter helplessness is quite powerful.

Another sunrise 

And again - just fooling around with the colours!

 Beautiful colours of an early morning

Old boat vs. new kayak

A worldchampion - already smiling at 06:45 in the morning - and ready for another day in paradise! 

Guess what - another sunrise 

Early morning sessions on Club Wave - best light ever while Dennis is rippin´it! 

Dennis at work

In the meantime I got an amazing book to read: "Living the best day ever" - the memoir's of Hendri Coetzee! A truly inspiring book and lots of it happened right here where I sit now and type these lines...
It´s a book I can highly recommend - and it´s a fast read too.

I´ve had a really interesting week so far: On thursday was “Marie Stopes” day – a big family planning day at the clinic! A team of doctors came to the Allan Stone Clinic to perform tubal ligations in local anesthesia plus diversion of the patient - “focal local” as they call it here! So this is abdominal surgery under local anesthesia!

The only apply local anesthetics to the abdominal wall and then somebody has to distract the patients, for example asking them questions about their children or asking them to tell some other stories of their life. And it usually works really well! The doctors only wear sterile gloves and an apron but no facial mask! And normally there aren´t any complications. They have a special technique and instruments to perform the task of tubal ligation: with a special hook the palpate the uterus and the cervix and then go behind it to find the tubes and pull them to the surface and do the ligation. And normally the don´t even get antibiotics – and the room´s are far from a sterile environment. It´s incredible what the human body can endure!

One day earlier I went to the local soccer-field to train and play with the local kids! One of the clinic-employees organizes the training – and he´s doing a great job! After the 60 minutes of warm up, gymnastics and stretching I thought I wouldn´t be able to play soccer with the guys – but I could! And it was amazing to see them play – they really are into their sports but always without being aggressive or playing unfair. And this week on Tuesday there´s going to be a soccer game organized by the clinic: staff vs. patients – I´m really looking forward to this!!

After this unique experience I went for a slightly longer kayaking weekend to the Hairy Lemon!

The island is now a little bit busier on the weekends than it was before: Claire and her coach Dennis are still there as are Brendan and Paul. And Jessie and Jörg also joined us a day later.

So with all the good kayakers around my moves are improving every weekend – it´s really great to get tips and tricks from a world champion!

The weather is unexpectedly hot for this time of the year – it´s still supposed to be rainy season but we didn´t have rain for almost 10 days now. And during the day it´s really hot but we usually played a few rounds of frisbee golf - sometimes just making up new crazy routes to play around the island! Every now and then the frisbees go far from the goal and have to be rescued from the wet grip of the mighty Nile or some thorny bushes – including other players who also get stuck there trying to get to the frisbees.

Here are a few shots from last weekend:

Amazing night-sky - can you find Orion?

Dennis Newton @ Clubwave

Dennis Newton @ Clubwave

Fish-eye view of Clubwave

White egret on the shore at Nile Special/Clubwave 

...lookin for some food

Claire O´hara @ Nile Special

Paul Palmer @ Nile Special 

Paul again

and again!

 Brendan Kraiker @ Nile Special in an evening session

And Paul again - clean Blunt off the rope @ Nile Special 

Brendan rippin´ it @ Club Wave

And Brendan again @ Nile Special

Burnie - a long term inhabitant of the Hairy Lemon Island (a fruitbat) 

Early morning view from the island just before going to paddle at about 6:30

same as above...

Claire @ Club Wave just after the sun came over the ridge

Yesterday there was a soccer game close to the local primary school of Kyabirwa (the place I´m staying at) organized by Soft Power Health for children from a small village down the river. 20 of them were brought to the soccer pit in one Matatu (small vans used in Uganda for transportation – they would fit a maximum of 10 people in Europe) and we really had a lot of fun playing with them! And we´ll play again in 2 weeks!

So over all I´m having an extremely good time here in Uganda – enjoying the country and the people and of course the kayaking!