The Epic Swim

As promised to my fellow swimmers, here are some photos and the blog post of the epic swim.

3 Hump Island in the distance

Ok, so we have written of Kumbya before – the amazingly beautiful retreat we go to on the weekends to swim and relax. Well, we heard about a challenge that is done every year at a big mission retreat weekend which unfortunately we will miss next year. The challenge is a swim to Three Hump Island and back. The island being a mile and a half away. While the challenge appealed (to me at least) it wasn’t something we were going to arrange ourselves…however, Julie, an old testament teacher out here for 3 months, is a very keen swimmer and her boyfriend Tim (also a very good swimmer/coach/diver) was due over on a visit from the UK soon, so she began to plan the challenge for us!

The date was set, good weather prayed for (and provided!), our support crew had 2 boats (for boat read dugout canoe) to carry them and our lunches across the water – we were ready! The swim team was myself, Julie, Edie, Tim, Dr Tim and a South African vet from Kigali. Our support crew were Matt, Dieudonne, Sam (Dr Tim’s son), Fabien (Julie’s friend on a visit from working in Burundi who also joined us on the return swim) and Christian (Dieudonne’s son), plus two Rwandan captains of the boats.

We dived and swam… and it was actually very enjoyable – I never thought I could swim that far without a poolside to rest against but as we were taking things slowly with some chatting and playing around time flew by very quickly! I felt more sorry for those I the canoes working hard to paddle all those people plus food and water across to the island!

 

It took an hour and a half to make it to the island where we had lunch, reapplied the suncream and then dived back in the lake for another hour and a half swim to Kumbya. Loved it but don’t think I will be repeating the experience while here!