Crossing the river

On Thursday afternoon, we visited the Dasanach tribe again.  This is the people that live around Omerate; the hot, dusty, god forsaken place that I likened to Tattoine, the inhospitable planet in Star Wars.  Yeah, we are going back to a similar village and this time we have to cross the Omo River which is close to flood stage.  The day before I noticed small canoes, propelled by a guy with a pole, not a paddle and they were very ineffective in the strong current.

Needless to say, I declined the canoe ride, fearing it would either be my last ride or that I would end up in Kenya as the current took us away.  Piper and Robel (our guide) managed to negotiate a motor boat to cross and we waited while they bailed out the boat in readiness for our crossing.

As I sat down in the boat I noticed a small hole in the floor with water gushing in.  As more of us got in, water started pouring in from a larger hole.  We needed to get going on our 200M crossing and fast!  Note, when you have a hole in your boat you need to plug it!  Amazingly, Piper put her feet over the two holes and that stopped the flow.  Don’t move Piper!

Well, we actually made it both ways across the River without major incident.  One of our guides dropped a bottle of water in the river causing alarm but generally OK, and we didn’t get a visit from any of the crocodiles.  Not too bad!  The photography at the Dasanach was amazing and we ended a great day.

Not quite!  As we drove home, we experienced our fourth puncture in five days and that used up our last tire.  Let’s see how this is going to turn out…..