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The science of suspension
Psychic numbing
Reinventing Ed's Coed
Bass driven
One year, one pair, zero washes
The big idea
Faith in recovery
I am Duck
Unfinished battles
Learning to lose
multimedia
African revolution tour
Running from crocodiles
story & photos Aaron Rettig
Editor's Note: In December 2007, Aaron Rettig found himself amid eastern Africa's austere landscapes. Along with world-renowned kayakers Lane Jacobs, Rush Sturges, Tyler Bradt, Ian Garcia, and Patrick Camblin, Rettig followed the banks of Africa's White Nile River with one mission: to discover uncharted whitewater. Video camera in hand, this University of Oregon senior and Flux videographer documented the expedition the kayakers dubbed The Africa Revolutions Tour.
In the north of Madagascar we ran from crocodiles. We startled one on a sandy riverbank and it thrashed its tail, raised its head, and disappeared into the river in front of us as we sprinted downstream. I remember in the confusion of motion and spray, smiling, and I don’t know why. Maybe because this seemed fitting, running from crocodiles. This was what was supposed to happen on African rivers. This was the adventure. Thinking about it now, I smiled because there is nothing that makes you freer than running from crocodiles, no feeling more immediate. It’s the same feeling you get from paddling whitewater. I was with my best friends, running a first descent on a wild Madagascar river, and we were running from crocodiles. Nothing could be better.
Far from the granite rivers and the Polynesian influence of Madagascar, near Conrad’s Congo River, and just below the killing fields of Sudan, lies the source of the White Nile River. Here in Jinja, Uganda, the Nile is born from the polluted waters of Lake Victoria and doesn’t stop until it reaches Egypt, some 3,500 miles away. In the first forty miles of the Nile’s life, the river drops in gradient and pushes its way through a series of islands, forming channels of whitewater with some of the biggest holes and waves found on the planet.
and go have some fun in Africa."
It was on the banks of this river, only yards from these rapids, that I found myself in December 2007 on a mission to explore the rivers of Africa with some of my closest friends and some of the best whitewater kayakers in the world. These were people who refused to live life by the rules, globetrotting in search of fame, glory, whitewater, and stories to tell the girls back home. Expedition leader, longtime friend, and kayaking all-star Tyler Bradt had recently broken the waterfall descent world record on Alexandria Falls, a 107-foot drop in Northern Canada. “How was it?” I asked twenty-one-year-old Bradt, who stood shirtless in the Ugandan sun, a Nile Special beer in his hand.
“Super chill,” said Bradt with a smile on his face, eyes hidden by a pair of oversized Smiths.
Between 2006 and 2007, three months before his world record descent, Bradt and whitewater legend Seth Warren drove a Japanese fire truck converted to run on vegetable oil from the northernmost point of Alaska to the southernmost point of Chile — promoting alternative fuels along the way. I joined them on the Colombia leg of the journey.
“Let’s get all the boys together and go have some fun in Africa,” Bradt said on the banks of the San Juan River in central Colombia.
“Fuck it, I’m in.” My words would have a profound effect on me one year later as we set off from Uganda, driving south, kayaks on the roof and hope in our hearts.
After crossing Kenya and escaping the escalating violence in the troubled Rift Valley, we traveled across the wide expanse of Maasai land sneaking under the shadow of Mt. Kilimanjaro, down through the agricultural lands of Tanzania, and directly through the poverty of Zambia. We drove day and night. We didn’t stop until we reached the banks of a grand river, which, after dropping 700 feet over Victoria Falls, plunges into one of the deepest, most intimidating gorges on the face of the earth. We gazed across the banks of the river into Zimbabwe, a land of unrest and speculation, a land where the names of politicians were on everyone’s lips.
When white explorers first peered over Victoria Falls into the rapids of the Zambezi, they immediately proclaimed it one of the wonders of the world. This river has made legends out of men. The high concentration of big-water rapids, backdropped by the spectacular falls, sent waves of adrenaline through my muscles as we dropped into the first rapid. As I looked up at the walls around me, I, like everyone experiencing the Zambezi from water level, realized the only way out was down. The river was swirling against the canyon walls. It pulled me, mocked my movements, and I gave in. I reached out a hand, grabbing at the water in an attempt to feel the power. It slid through my fingers.
On a sandy bank, somewhere beyond the chaos, muscular male smugglers rested with Zambian goods that would fetch a high price across the river in economically ravaged Zimbabwe. They raised calloused hands and flashed white smiles at us, chirping in a singsong language, voices reverberating off rock walls, soon to disappear in the roar of whitewater.
Three days of driving across Botswana and the northern part of South Africa found us in Bethlehem in time for Christmas. Here one can see the blue ridges of Lesotho. It was in these mountains that the bloody battles of the two Boer Wars were fought. To this day the fiercely independent Afrikaners remain rooted to the ground that holds the bones of their ancestors. Even after the fall of apartheid, the rise in power of the African National Congress, and the latest racial tensions brought about by land claims, the white Afrikaners refuse to leave the land they consider to have first inhabited. Looking at the cool, level stares of the Xhosa, the Zulu, and the inhabitants of the townships, I find the arguments of the white nationalists hard to believe. Their principles are entrenched in the colonial doctrine of an era that has passed them by and face a future where they might not belong.
we were doing the unimaginable.
In Durban we met up with the rest of the crew and began our expedition in earnest. Running fifty-footers in the Zulu stronghold of Kwaza-Zulu Natal, we hiked over green ridges to paddle rivers in the Drakensberg Mountains and dropped into steep gorges in the dry desert highlands of the Transkei region. We surfed waves on the Wild Coast and, perhaps our greatest accomplishment, put on below the famous 700-foot Semonkong Falls in the independent Kingdom of Lesotho. We ran the river three days until we reached the first village. In this village, Bradt and I hiked upstream two miles, crossed the river, and bought outdated beer from a village of twelve. The villagers announced with great dignity that we were the first white people to visit this place. Next time, they insisted, we must give them warning of our arrival. They would have slaughtered a goat.
After chasing African rains and checking off river drainages one by one, we came to our final destination: Madagascar. Here time takes a slow turn backward. The European-style cobblestone streets of the capital, the fresh baked bread, the church steeples, and the language spoken are all reminders of the French colonizers whose legacy remains. In the south, villagers gathered as we ran first descents on swollen rivers that were pouring over banks and flooding rice fields. They ran alongside us, barefoot and screaming with every stroke. In a land with no knowledge of kayaking, we were doing the unimaginable, and they were witnesses to it.
Africa is a reminder and lesson in mortality. Because of this, moments of pure brilliance stand out; moments that you can never fully reproduce or mimic. In the northern part of Madagascar, days after running from crocodiles, I had such an experience of purity. On the first descent of the Kazamana River, starting with waterfall after waterfall of clean, cold water that emptied into green pools, we were surrounded by grass hills and scars of granite; slashes in the hills, promises of more drops to come. We eventually came to that promise. The river dropped in front of us, and we paddled to a horizon line, looking hundreds of feet below us into the valley. For three days, we ran quality virgin whitewater. Secluded in the wild, stroke after stroke, we achieved brilliance. We forgot our mortality as it fled somewhere far away, to another river, another adventure, and we continued to paddle downstream.