New Complex: Bungee Jumping into the Nile

....I'll start from the beginning.

It was Friday, August 8, 2008, 6:15 pm.
We drove up to the Adrift Campground in Jinja, Uganda to wait for the rest of our group who wanted to join us for some unintelligently suicidal fun. It was a beautiful place, situated on the River Nile in the middle of the rain forest. It actually seemed pretty surreal that I was even standing there. It cost us about 65 US dollars to sign up, and it cost me about half my life preparing to jump by watching the other crazies do it. From where I stood, the fragility of life became glaringly significant.

The sun was setting and it was time to go, so I started up the steep hike towards the tower. My body was on FIRE with crazy anxiety and nervous laughter. From where I stood, the tower looked perilous and daunting. What was I even doing? Each stair, ready to break in half with any step, seemed steeper than the last. I paused frequently to "take in the view" (and a few deep breaths). Holy crap! I was about to jump off a 150 foot platform into the Nile! No. Big. Deal.

My poor mother.

I was feeling pretty tough and indestructible - so I volunteered to go first. To my surprise, it was two gentlemen from New Zealand running the show...with a calming humor about them... and friendly smiles as if to say, "I promise I won't kill you." They weighed me, sat me down in what, to me, resembled an electric chair, and then wrapped a wet towel around my ankles. My mind was going a million miles an hour. I actually started feeling a little dizzy. But..I stood up with confidence, now fully equipped by African standards to adequately risk my life, and shuffled/hopped to the rickety wooden plank. Only problem now was as soon as I got there I wanted to get down... and in a way that DIDN'T involve the act of jumping. I was freaking out in my mind, while trying to keep a tough exterior. I was so close to backing out - distracting the people in charge of making sure I go through with it, and coolly wiping the sweat off my forehead.

This next part, I blame on my brother.

They took the long heavy cord attached to my feet and put it over the edge. It reminded me of watching someone who was about to experience death by cement shoe drowning. I was pretty much to the point of PURE GIRLY RIDICULOUSNESS. But then, the face of my brother Riley popped into my skull. I was not only aware that he would be supremely disappointed in and ashamed of me if I hesitated for even one more second, I was aware that he had, over the last 22 years, given me a morbid sense of adventure and suicidal carelessness....and that I was about to throw myself off that cliff despite every shred of sense I possessed.

They told me if I wanted my hands to graze the top of the river, I needed to jump straight out and do a big Pocahontas swan dive. And well, maybe I should have protested. The last time I did a swan dive (at the encouragement of my older brother) at the Meridian Swimming Pool when I was 15 years old, I ended up doing one sweetly massive belly flop off the high dive in front of my entire Young Men/Young Women's group AND the man I was in love with...resulting in a great story of "one of my most embarrassing moments" for posterity's sake. I couldn't help but smile a little bit remembering that story on top of a small wooden board in Uganda about to do something similarly stupid. Oh man. So - they counted down from 3 - 3,2,1...Bungee...and I just jumped. Straight out. Pocahontas style. I remember feeling TERRIFYINGLY surprised at how fast I was falling. And then I made stupid move #2 by diving down head first, resulting in my falling even FASTER. That was the moment I, Mallory Hurst, experienced sheer...unadulterated...terror. People throw that word around. I only wish there were one more suitable.

All I could do was stare at the water approaching and put my arms out as if by some magical force it would stop me. And then all of a BLOODY sudden, I hit the water face first with both eyes wide open (unintentional stupid move #3)... and plunged through the river, in all its Nile glory, up to my knees. The cord whipped me back up, which was the last direction on earth I wanted to go, giving me just the right amount of time to plot the way in which I was going to KILL the person who suggested I do this. And then I went into a fit of laughter as I realized I had just developed a complex, and would sooner want malaria than to do that again.

Battle wounds: 1
I noticed later that night that the left side of my left eye was completely full of blood. The impact had popped a few blood vessels.../slash/ all of them....making the entire left side of it completely red. Perhaps I should have ALSO envisioned the frequent emergency room visits my brother encountered while building up my false courage.

Publisher's Note: I won't be putting up any pictures again until I get home... in 13 days... :)... because LIKE the Nile River, the computer viruses have completely taken me over.