27 Mar Sadat

Where are you from?
Uganda. I was born in Jinja, next to the source of the Nile, home to some of the biggest whitewater worldwide.

How long have you been guiding? Where have you guided?

I started my guiding career as a safety kayaker in 2008. I was still going to school by then, so I mostly worked over the weekends. After I graduated high school in 2010, I started training as a raft guide and worked as such full time thereafter. At the time Josh Melcher lived in Uganda as well – fun fact! He started training me at the time.

Since then, I represented the Uganda freestyle Kayak Team in the World Freestyle Kayak Championship 2015 in Canada, on the Ottawa river. I have also guided three seasons in Iceland (2018/2019/2022), two seasons in Kenya, and I’ve done a one-month expedition on the Blue Nile, in Ethiopia. Privately, I’ve done many different kayak trips; for example, on the Zambezi river, on different rivers in Ecuador and on the Nile and other rives in Uganda and Kenya.

What do you love about guiding?
I love sharing my passion and love for the rivers with the people I meet, when guiding them on the rivers. They come to places they would otherwise have no access to, which hopefully gives them another reason to cherish our precious nature and help preserve our rivers.

What’s your favourite rapid on the Kicking Horse River?

Yet to come!

What’s on your bucket list that you have left to cross off?
I would love to run my own water sports company one day, preferably on the African country. However, the company can be anywhere life happens to take me in the future.