Hayestack

The end of our visit was in sight. But before we went we just had to make one more visit.   This was to the Watoto Project situated just outside Kampala.  Though Sally had tried to contact the organisers by phone she had been unsuccessful, so they were not prepared for our visit.  In spite of [...]

We visited the Amani Baby Cottage before we left Jinja. This was home to about 50 orphans who had been abandoned at the hospital shortly after birth. The most recent had been found abandoned in the rain.

The engine on the boat fluttered a bit then gave out completely. The people showed no sense of panic as the boat drifted towards the weir, the boatman vigorously tugging at the engine’s start-up cord. He was fighting a losing battle.The engine was completely dead. The bystanders looked on anxiously, the boat picking up speed [...]

Day 8 took us from Kabale to Kampala. It was Sunday, the day when, traditionally, people either go to Church or wash their cars. As we drove out of Kabale…drivers were washing their lorries next to signs that read, “Washing vehicles by the side of the road is prohibited”. A bit further down the road [...]

Penina, the director of Denis project arrived “side-saddle” on the back of a motorbike/taxi. It was a good way to travel if you wanted to avoid the squash of an over full minibus/taxi.   If you couldn’t afford the motorbike taxi you used a push-bike taxi.   I had been wondering why rows of young men on [...]

Our journey to Kisora took us on a short safari through the Queen Elizabeth National Park.We could see elephants in the distance and many water bucks, kobs, water buffalo, hippos and gibbons. But we were disappointed not to see zebras and giraffes in particular.  We were told the recent rain had sent many animals deeper [...]

Mweya Safari Lodge has been dubbed the “Sheraton in the Bush” and is a popular resort with Royalty, Presidents, Pop Stars and us. It was our only night of sheer, unadulterated luxury and we should have been ashamed of ourselves, except that we enjoyed it so much.  We could only stay one night because [...]

“Do you have grasshoppers in the UK?” Moses asked. We assured him we did. “Do you eat them?” he continued. We assured him we didn’t. He explained that they were a luxury food in Uganda.  Men gave them to their wives and girlfriends instead of flowers and chocolates.  “The women absol-u-u-tley [...]

Have you ever woken up and, for the first 30 seconds, had no idea where you were? It was like that when I woke up in Sophie’s Motel. The bed was strange (I’m not used to waking up in strange beds), the room was strange, the light was strange. Then I remembered…we were half way [...]

Sunday melted into Monday as we flew above the clouds over Eastern Europe, Turkey and Iran towards our change at Dubai.Miss Potter entertained us as did the seemingly endless flow of food and drink which stopped thinking that we were in a huge chunk of metal weighing hundreds, if not thousands of tonnes, flying 36,000 [...]