Nile Source News Next Edition
Gale 12, a 13000 km bike ride and some tennis
 

In the night 13 to 14 we had an East rainstorm that would probably have blown us ashore again if we would still be moored on our anchors (more on (more on storms and our present mooring). It is difficult to estimate the wind speed of the worst gusts, but I would not be surprised if they were 12 Beaufort (120 km/hrs): 4 fishermen died. In the Western view unnecessarily: the problems are optimism on storm development: "it won't be so bad", sometimes inability to swim, no lifejackets nor its low budget replacement: a 20 l jerry can to hold on to. The same as always, the men get buried, children are not allowed to get near the lake for a few weeks and then everything is back to normal, until the next storm.

Damp sunsets mark storm prone nights

At the fishing village where the Israelis are building their dream boat I met Colin, who arrived in Jinja from London by bike. He cycled from London to Dover, took a ferry, then went down through France, Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Western Sahara, Mauritania, Senegal, Gambia, Guinea, C�te d'Ivoire (thus going around Sierra Leone and Liberia because he thought the $100 visa for each of these two countries to expensive), Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroon, Gabon, Rep. of Congo, Democratic Rep. of Congo. At Kinshasa he opted for some care: he took a plane to Goma (in Congo at the Rwandan border), then arrived in Uganda, Jinja through Rwanda. He started at 23. Now he is 26. This week he will head for Kenya and Ethiopia, from where he will take a plane home to London. He now likes to see back his family, he said.
Colin agreed with me that one should never actually give one's passport to police if they ask for it, because they will try to get a ransom for its return. But in Congo, he added, this was not the line to stick to, because at refusal to hand over your passport, police would simply start to beat you. There, he told, you should give the passport and then reply to the ransom demand by saying you cannot not miss any money. Police, he found, was shy of simply beating the money out of your pocket and would after and hour, or after a day, give up and simply return the passport.

Colin and (green line) his bike journey

When Colin heard I had rackets, he begged me for a tennis game. We played at Nile Resort Hotel with Itay, one of the Israeli boat builders.

With Itay and Colin (dark grey of shirt and dark maroon part of cap: my sweat!)

Colin, holding his racket as if he is just about to stir a gigantic pot of porridge, returns most balls, up to the best ones you hit, often winners. Itay (24) has a more scholarly style, but had not played for a long time. I could keep up with both of them, but discovered that at 57 your muscles and breath are really unfit for the quick starts and runs required for decent tennis. The last half hour before sunset the boys were still in fierce competition while I, exhausted, had started my beers at the hotel's swimming pool.