World Championships Canada

The struggle to get a visa

The trip was very interesting for the whole team. First of all, we had to raise money, through fundraising events, to get us there. Once we got enough money, the trouble came in. Getting visa to Canada as a Ugandan... After gathering all the paperwork we knew we needed, we applied for the first time. Our application got denied, because, they said, we did not have enough proof that we would return to Uganda after the competition.

Before trying a second time, we collected all the proof we could possibly provide, that we had reasons to come back to our home country, after our trip; land titles, family ties, employment contracts, businesses owned, insurances, return tickets, enough funding and recommendation letters from different people. Then we applied again. This time we where very sure we would get our visas. Heartbreakingly, we got a phone call two weeks later, that our passports needed correction/renewal. However, those passports were new for most of us. We knew they would keep denying us, even though we fulfilled all the requirements .

We almost gave up. Many people from the international kayak community reached out to us and offered to write letters to the Canadian embassy. Also, an international social media campaign was set up, to put pressure on the Canadian Embassy. We applied for the third time and got accepted!

The trip to and arrival in Canada

When we got the green light to Canada, we had only 7 days before the the competition would start. We couldn’t find a flight that would depart from Uganda in time, so we had to find one from another East-African country. With two hours notice, we had to catch a bus to Kenya, which took 13 hours.

After making it to the airport over there, you can imagine it must have been an interesting trip, as none of us had flown before and we had to figure out terminals, gates, boarding passes, lay overs, different airports, check ins etcetera, etcetera. With no experience at all! At the time is was stressful and confusing, in hindsight is was hilarious. Lucky enough, we made it there successfully.

The welcoming was great (as you can see in the video), after which we got an enormous amount of sponsored gears and everyone wanted to interview us, as the social media had exploded earlier, announcing that we finally got the visas and were on our way. The kayaking started early the next day, on the Ottawa river. Unfortunately we didn’t really have enough time to get used to this new river and mainly it’s temperature. We did not do as good as we hoped, but it was a great experience!

The whole trip was a game changer. Wish to be back there one day.