Choosing to SEE - Mary Beth Chapman [50]
As we got ready to start, our guide walked us into the shallows and told all of us to get in the water.
“Why?” I asked. “I’m not planning on getting wet.”
“We need to teach you how to flip the boat over in case it capsizes,” the guide said. “And you need to know how to get back into the raft when you fall into the river.”
They showed us how to flip the big boats. This should have been my first clue that things might get crazy later. We were told that if our rafts flipped, we were to swim to any boat in our group – whichever was easiest to get to – and grab the ropes with both hands, crossed over each other. Then, as the guides would grab us by the wrists and pull, the idea was that we would rotate because of our wrists being crossed and fall neatly into the boat on our backs.
Once we’d practiced our little safety precautions, off we went. One of the other rafts drifted by. It was full of excited Americans who looked like they had been on a missions trip. As they went by we could hear them all singing at the top of their lungs:
The river’s deep, the river’s wide,
The river’s water is alive
So sink or swim, I’m divin’ in!
They were thrilled that they could actually sing the lyrics of Steven’s hit song “Dive” right to its author out there on, of all places, the Nile River.
Our SS Chapman headed out into the river. It was calm, quiet, beautiful. I lay back, perfectly at peace.
We continued this way for a mile or so . . . and then, in the distance, something intruded on my bliss. It was growing louder and louder, like the sound of a thousand freight trains. As I strained to see what in the world that sound was, I finally saw it in the distance: Niagara Falls on steroids. And our little fabric boat was being sucked straight toward it.
I didn’t even have time to scream. Our guide was shouting as loud as he could and we could still barely hear his instructions: “If I yell ‘paddle,’ then paddle with all you’ve got. And if we flip over, try and grab hold of the side of the boat!”
The last thing I saw was the front of the boat rising up in front of me, vertically. Then the bottom dropped out of my life – and my stomach – as I heard that daggum guide yelling, “Paddle!” And then I was underneath tons and tons of churning, rushing water taking me down and around and around and around, like a washing machine. I struggled, somehow popped above the surface of the mad water for a second, took a breath, and then down I went again, swirling into the abyss.
I popped out again, hyperventilating. I’m gonna die! I thought. Steven has killed not just me, but half our family!
Miraculously, when I popped up again, my eyes caught Steven’s as the boat was almost on top of us. If looks could kill, he would have been dead. I was panicking, worrying about Emily, who was not the strongest swimmer. But eventually the whole Chapman group was found alive and gathered back into that death trap of a raft.
“Wasn’t that awesome?” our guide yelled.
I looked at him like he was out of his mind.
“Are there any more like that?” I asked.
“Oh yeah, there are five total,” the guide bragged. “They get worse the further we go. Remember, if our boat flips, just swim to the closest raft.”
“Didn’t I hear something about a safety boat, you know, a different boat for people who panic?” I asked. I was envisioning something like an aircraft carrier, but larger.
“Oh yeah,” said our guide, who I was beginning to dislike more and more with every passing second. “Yeah, well, sometimes the safety boat flips too.”
“Then why do they call it the safety boat?” I yelled.
No more time for chatting. I could hear the roar of billions of tons of water. It was Niagara the Second.
It was the same drill as before. Our raft went vertical, and I was driven down into the vortex of washing machine hell. Again.
“Oh, well,” I moaned in my oxygen-starved brain. “At least I’m gonna die on a missions trip in Africa!”
I popped up to grab a gasp of air. I saw Caleb floating by, clawed desperately