The Great Primate Handshake – Volunteer in Africa, working to conserve monkeys and apes through film and educational content production

Today many of us decided to go white water rafting on the Nile. I think we supposed that the experience would be relatively tame, but we could not have been more wrong. We split into two groups; in one raft was myself, Laurence, Alex (who had, less than an hour previously, dipped her head into the Nile whilst bungee jumping along with Steph), Tasha, Abbie, Emily and Eleanor. By the end of the day our guide, Peter, had named us the ‘Extreme Chickens’ as we had started out full of confidence and by lunchtime we were pleading to take the ‘chicken route’ through each rapid. The other raft consisted of James, Ben, Kiera, Nia, Suzanne and Ellie. They survived twelve rapids ranging from grades 1 to 5 in extremity, only capsizing on one of them. The ‘Extreme Chickens’, however, survived a measly two rapids out of twelve without capsizing. The two most terrifying rapids were the ‘Silverback’, during which Abbie and myself found ourselves flung at a high speed towards the rocky edge to the left of the rapid; and the ‘Waterfall’ which was by far the most terrifying experience of my life. Our raft became stuck on the rock at the top of the waterfall, and me and Laurence found ourselves staring down into the rocky depths for what seemed like an uncomfortably long time, before being dislodged and finding ourselves trapped underneath the raft. Although the raft has air holes along the bottom, the rapids are so strong that we found ourselves flung around with such force that we were completely disoriented. All we could see was white foam, and not knowing which way was up or which was down, whether we were under the raft or not, not getting enough air into our lungs, was scary, coupled with the roaring of the water being the only sound that we could hear. Me and Tash surfaced simultaneously, yet I was being pulled away from the raft by the forceful rapids. Tash literally saved my life, grabbing onto me and saving me from being smashed against the rocks. All in all it was an amazing experience, but many of us felt that we had narrowly escaped serious injuries.  We then went back to our hostel, where we were greeted with a well earned barbecue which was gone within minutes. All in all a fun experience and an amazing day out on the Nile.