My life story
-SADAT KAWAWA-
Thank you for your interest in my story!
This is a summary of how my kayaking and rafting career started. Further down you can find the RedBull and CNN documentary.
I grew up in Bujagali. That is a small village next to the river Nile, in Uganda. Before the Bujagali dam was built, Bujagali had enormous rapids, in which I learned how to swim and later learned how to kayak.
The first time I sat in a kayak was in 2007. I was 15 years old at the time. At the time, I could not afford any kayak gear. However, it was a kayaking hotspot for international kayakers all over the world. Most of them were ok with me borrowing their equipment if I carried their kayaks to the river for them. That is how I learned how to paddle and how I practiced for years. I learned together with my brothers from the same neighbourhood, who were known in the area as the ‘Bujagali boys’.
A couple of years later I started working for Adrift, a rafting company, in which I was first trained as a safety kayaker, but soon got promoted to raft guide. When scrolling down you can find a picture of the first group of tourists that I took rafting. You can also see the Bujagali boys paddling the Bujagali falls for the last time in 2011 and competing in the ‘King Fisher’ race on Lake Victoria. As ‘Bujagali boys’ we were sure we would win, which unfortunately was not the case. Paddling a fisherman’s boat is different and difficult!
I loved every experience on the water, when growing up you could find me there every day. This has not changed! Scroll through some of my childhood pictures:
Becoming a professional and going international!
While working at Adrift as a raft guide, I always kept training as a kayaker and started competing in Ugandan and Kenyan competitions. These events had many international kayakers as well. Competing against them and occasionally beating them made me increasingly well-known in the international kayak community. With the help of Sam Ward, who owned Kayak the Nile at the time, we raised money and filed for the paperwork to get a visa to Canada and compete in the World Championships Freestyle Kayaking.
Eventually, we succeeded and competed. Thereafter, I worked in Iceland for a while and traveled to Spain and Ethiopia for competitions.
Red Bull got in touch with me to film me in 2018, as I was asked to compete in Unleashed - the biggest international kayaking competition, for which you need to be invited. Last year, CNN approached me as well, to film me for the series “African Voices”.
Red Bull - Unleashed
Unleashed is one of the world’s most extreme annual kayaking competitions, which was held in my home on the Nile, in 2018.
Red Bull came to film me, for their documentary series ‘The Way of the Wild Card’. Click ‘see video’ for the episode.
CNN - African Voices
CNN filmed me in 2023 during the Nile River Festival, again in my hometown.
Click “see video” to go to the CNN site and watch the episode.
CANAL + Unleashed
A French TV channel that travels around African countries and tells stories of interesting inhabitants. For the French-speaking visitors of this website; you can watch the video, by clicking play!
Championships Canada
My first time out of the African continent was in 2015, when we managed to travel to Canada for the World Championships Freestyle Kayaking. The Ugandan Freestyle team consisted of 4 paddlers.
Iceland - ‘17, ‘18 and ‘22
For three seasons I have worked at Viking Rafting in Iceland, during which I kayaked many rivers, was filmed in a documentary called “Fly over Iceland”, went on glacier water trips, competed and rafted in ice water. Do you want to see the footage of “Fly over Iceland”?
Ethiopia - Blue Nile
During this four-weeks trip on the Blue Nile in the fall 2018, I paddled rapids never paddled before, got shot at, camped in the most beautiful places and got attacked by a crocodile. It was an amazing experience with lots of cool videos!