Samantha Williams

So he teaches us the brace position.

There are six of them on little canoes sort of beside us in the raft, and they tell us no one ever flips over, of course.

You're going to be just fine.

There and there, I don't know what they're called, like kayaks, and they're like, and if anything happens, we got you.

We start going down the rapids, and I'm feeling the breeze.

It's actually kind of nice.

We're surviving, so I'm happy.

And then we start to get to the ones that, the rapids that have names, and I've forgotten the names, but it's like the washing machine, you know, the closet door, you know, the closet door.

because it's like it's flams clothes really fat you know it's like okay and then we get to the terminator and i was like are we going on the terminator and he's like yep get your you know get your oars down we're down we're down and then he screams out brace which means you're supposed to drop your oar into the raft and like put your head down so he screams brace we do that and the next thing i know we are completely submerged under the water i don't even remember this part of the day

I remember my friend, Farai, who was my roommate in grad school.

That means she owes me nothing in life, but we became great friends after this.

She pulled me out of the water.

I mean, I can't swim, so this vest, it can save you in still water, but the rapids going over your head from the Terminator, it's got very little to do.

She's holding me for dear life and holding me onto the raft.

It's completely overturned, so the bottom is up.

And we're all just sort of screaming in the water going over these rapids.

The kayakers are telling us there's nothing we can do until they can get us over into the side of the river bank.

And we notice that someone in the water starts having an asthma attack.

This is a black woman who has started to turn purple.

She cannot breathe, and I start noticing that my side really hurts, but she's purple, so I gotta keep it quiet, but my side really hurts.