When we drove off the main road the dirt track ahead was blocked by motorcycles and a group of men making a show of digging up the road.  One of them approached holding out a basket, and, when we had made a donation, were allowed to pass.  These budding entrepreneurs had created their own unofficial toll road.  There is no limit to the ingenuity and creativity of ambitious Ugandans.  As long as the country doesn’t sink again into the abyss of tribal conflict the ability to adapt and improvise will assure their future.

The Watoto Project was very different from the others we had seen.  Famous for its children’s’ choir, its mission is ostensibly to create future leaders for Uganda from the ready supply of available orphans.  The buildings are well made and spaciously separated on a large campus.  These villages each with its own school, church and medical centre are elite and thriving.  There are several around the country with a new one being built in the north at Gulu at the moment.  They are further rays of hope for Uganda’s future.

We now turned south towards Entebbe.  On the way to the airport we stopped at the botanical gardens and sat dipping our fingers into the cool waters of Lake Victoria as we watched egrets and pied kingfishers fly around us.  Moses had seemed despondent all morning.  Was he sad that we were leaving or sad that a lucrative job was coming to an end?  We hoped it was the former.  Moses contribution had been vital to the success of our visit.  He had always been cheerful, helpful and informative.  He drove us places that we otherwise would not have visited and smoothed our way with the locals.  We greatly appreciated all he did for us and would certainly recommend him to others.

As we sat on the plane wiping the dust of Uganda from our hands and faces with the hot towels provided, it was not so easy to remove the experiences we’d had of the country and people from our hearts and minds.  We would be cherishing them for a long time to come.

We were at Jinja, a short journey from Kampala and where Lake Victoria pours out its massive waters into the source of the Nile. In the nineteenth century the location of the Nile’s headwater had been a puzzle for many eminent Victorian explorers including David Livingstone, and it wasn’t until John Hanning Speke found this very spot that the actual source was discovered.

Just down the river was Bujagali Falls, a series of dangerous rapids where you could pay a local to throw himself into the water with a plastic yellow bottle tied to his body so that you could watch his deadly progress over the rocks.I did not wish to be a party to this assisted suicide attempt, so graciously declined the offer. Apart from our visit, two significant events occurred at Bujagali Falls that day. One was a visit from the Ugandan President who was inaugurating the building of a new hydro-electric dam, The other was the ritual of gaining the approval of the water spirits by relocating them before the dam destroyed the rapids. The local witch doctor announced that the water spirits were appeased and showed their approval by causing a rain storm. Moses laughed cynically, proclaiming it a scam to attract tourists. I think he had a point.

Huge jackfruit, like giant elongated melons, grew everywhere in this region. Moses stopped to buy a slice. Before we could eat it he had to clean off the dust and grime of the road with an old piece of newspaper. Newsprint was the flavour of the month, apparently. The jackfruit tasted sweet and not unlike pineapple, though nicer.

The tree-lined town of Jinja was well built, spacious and hinted of richer colonial days. There was a large Asian population and decent, well-stocked shops. Surrounded by Coco-pops, Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut, and Bird’s Custard Powder, we could have been at home. Even the prices were the same. We bought Snickers. They had been made in Egypt and tasted as if they had been dug up from Pharaoh’s tomb.

We stayed in a Mexican hotel that night. It had been owned by an Asian man who had been expelled by that evil tyrant Idi Amin dada (who may at this very moment be rotting in hell). After restitution, the son returned from Leeds, improved the hotel and landscaped the grounds. He was enthusiastic about the British Royal family and grateful for the opportunities he had been given while living in Britain. Our villa-type rooms, hidden by climbing vegetation, over-looked the swimming pool. The hotel was beautiful, though strangely devoid of guests. The owner’s wife was Texan and had started the nearby Amani orphanage to look after orphaned and abandoned babies.

Georgina couldn’t resist the lure of the swimming pool and joined 2 black girls who were being given a swimming lesson by their father who sat fully clothed on the side. “ Precious, keep kicking”. “Precious, keep moving your arms.” “Precious, swim over here.” Precious paid little heed. Georgina joined in, moving Precious arms & legs in the required directions. “That’s it, Precious. You’re in school now. Do as teacher says.” “Precious, though reluctant at first, was warming to her lessons.” The father, sucking on a clear bag containing amber liquid, was becoming more and more incoherent. His wife, sitting alone on the other side of the pool paid little heed to the proceedings and seemed pleased when it was time to go. “Say goodbye to the dog”, the man shouted to his children as they left the pool. “It’s rude to go without saying goodbye to the dog”. Precious had already gone. He stumbled his way towards me. I kept my head down and pretended to carry on reading my book. “It’s good that people can get on and live together.” He slurred at me. “”We can be friends together. You help my children. We are friends. My father was a professor. He wanted me to be one too, but I was a failure and let him down. I don’t beg. There are people who beg. But for what? Eh? I just want contacts. It’s just contacts. Some people beg. But what for? He hunched his shoulders and looked me straight in the eye. “But I don’t beg. What for? Eh? What for?” He was waving his arms about and seemed to want a response.” Not knowing what he was talking about I struggled to find one. Best agree with him, I thought. “Yea, what for?” I ventured. This was not an adequate response. He carried on as before. “My father had expectations of me and I could not live up to them. I was a disappointment.” This man clearly needed counselling. “All I need is contacts. Contacts are good, no?” Some people beg. But not me. It’s contacts, eh?” “Yes,” I agreed. Suddenly his tone changed to one of annoyance. “You are friends to my children, but you are not my friend.”With that he stormed off.Being particularly dense that day I had not realised he was asking for my name and address etc. What would he have done with them? He doesn’t beg. The bag he was sucking turned out to be “Mike Tyson, the drink with extra punch, 40% alcohol.”

That night we slept in a mad house. Rats were running a marathon in the roof space. Was that a baboon jumping on our roof? In the early hours, a chorus of raucously discordant birds screeched incessantly, and continually dragged us back from sleep. There was nearly a serious case of bird murder, but we later discovered that this horrific noise was made by a tiny tree frog attracting a mate. It wouldn’t have needed a mate if I’d have caught it.

Moses notices some carrots for sale and stops. He wants to take a present to his wife in Kampala. When he returns to the car we can tell he is slightly annoyed. “The trouble with these people (street sellers), is as soon as they see white people in the car they double the price.” As we approach Lake Victoria we see stalls of large fish for sale. His wife would like a fish. They are large tilapia and have been freshly caught. It’s a delicious fish and we have eaten it nearly every day. The first negotiation is unsuccessful.. It’s the “white” problem again. Next time, Moses parks beyond the stall and manages to secure a satisfactory price. He ties the large, silver fish to the front of his car like a hunting trophy. We’ll probably be chased down the road by a pack of hungry dogs. At least the inside of the car won’t smell and we are grateful for that.

I had switched on the TV again that morning expecting to find soccer. Instead, it had been Ugandan Big Brother, and quite riveting. For twenty minutes a girl lay on her bed reading a book. The highlight came in the twenty-first minute when she coughed. The excitement was too much for me and I had to switch it off. I’m not sure why that came to mind as we sped back to Kampala with a large fish tied to the front of the car. “This is the region I come from.” Moses brought me back from my reverie. Suddenly, we swerve off the road into a garage forecourt and narrowly miss the girl petrol attendant. The man standing by the back wall looks worried as we approach but smiles when he recognises Moses. This is Farouk, one of Moses brothers. Moses is laughing when he returns to the car. “Farouk said to me,’ what’s this? You only drive whites now?’” and he continues to laugh. Moses seems pretty pleased with himself.

We pass a diesel lorry and trailer overturned by the side of the road. Villagers were gathering with plastic containers to collect their share of free diesel. It reminded me of the Cornish “wreckers” who lured ships onto the rocks to steal their cargos. No, that couldn’t be happening here.

Our journey ends at the Red Chilli Hideaway in Kampala. Monkeys shriek as they jump from tree to tree in the garden. As it was Sunday we took a minibus/taxi to the Kampala Pentecostal Church in the centre of the city. Sally had heard of its connection with the Watoto Baby Project and their Children’s Choir. We squeeze into a minibus/taxi legally registered for only fourteen passengers. We didn’t know it at the time but any excess passengers can be prosecuted along with the driver. There were nineteen of us in that bus and we were the last to get on.

The church (a theatre) was full. We had to stand at the back, no, we could sit at the front in seats reserved for the pastors. We hoped we wouldn’t be called up to speak. The evening was given over to 2 visiting groups, one, a dance troupe, the other, a comedy group. We heard the satirical song about the Queen’s impending visit but we didn’t see much, as the cameraman was plonked directly in front of us. They don’t seem to think much of their pastors, or maybe their pastors were blind? Never mind, we wouldn’t stay long as it would soon be dark and we didn’t want to negotiate Kampala at night. It was dangerous. “It’ll look rude if we walk out from the front row,” said Georgina. “Let’s stay a bit longer.” The entertainment began to over-run, seriously. I began to stress out. Would they let us stay in the theatre until morning? No. Kampala was black when we pored out onto the street. The minibus/taxis were full and not going our way. The driver of one thought he might be going our way and we could get in anyway. We got in, though logic dictated otherwise. It’s strange how we can act against all common sense and reason. The girl in front of me turned around. She had heard me mention The Red Chilli Hideaway. She lived behind it and would tell us where to get off. What an answer to prayer. She had been at the church and might be sold into slavery with us. At least, she could help ward off our attackers or hurl insults at them in their language. Sharon, our girl, disappeared at one stop. I panicked. Where was she? She turned up sitting behind me. She was with her sister Dorothy who became Sally’s instant friend and accompanied us up the dark lane to the hotel. They didn’t seem to be at all afraid. What? A silly baby? Who me?

We drove across the airfield to Denis house.  The nearby mountains looked like pudding basins on the landscape.  We parked in a field and started to walk the rest of the way to the house.  Paul drove up on his motorbike.  “Anyone want a lift?”  Georgina was on the back of that bike before anyone could say,” yes, please” and they were off, bouncing across the countryside.  Denis came running out to meet us.  His expression didn’t show it but he had been so excited at Sally’s visit that he hadn’t slept the previous night.   Paul explained that this was the happiest day of Denis’ life.  Even when given presents Ugandan children don’t show emotion on their faces, but they are happy and grateful inside.  This rang true with our experience at the previous project.  We were shown the large water tank that Sally’s sponsorship had bought along with the “portaloo” toilet in the garden.  Sally was given beans, sorghum and Irish (ordinary as opposed to sweet) potatoes.  Like the chicken at Kasese, these were given to the project.  We had visited Denis’ secondary school that morning. The classrooms were basic, empty apart from a blackboard and rows of wooden desks crammed in.  A few students were using their holiday doing extra maths.  Education is one way out of dire poverty and the competition is fierce.  Extra, hard work is necessary.   The students were courteous, charming and didn’t seem to mind that our distraction had probably cost them a couple of marks in their next maths exam.  On our way out we met the headmaster.  When he had worked out who Denis was he told us all about his progress.  Moses suggestion that Sally might like to see some of Denis’ work was a bridge too far.  “I think we’ll leave it at that,” he said friendly but firmly.  One doesn’t mess with the headmaster so we didn’t hang around to be put in detention.   It struck me that Moses at school had been well-experienced at winding up headmasters.

“Virginity is for both boys and girls”, “Say no to casual sex” “Say no to bad touching”.  These were some of the slogans painted on the exterior walls of the primary school attached to the project.  Provided you could read English there was no getting away from the message.  It was something to read at playtime. The previous sponsor visitor had taken exception to the school and moved their child to another one.

There was no avoiding the switch-back ride back to Kabale.  We stopped at the top of a hill and Sally gave the remaining gifts to two ragged children at the side of the road.  Suddenly, we were besieged by swarms of them, clambering around and pushing forward with their hands out.  They had materialised out of thin air.  “Go away.  You mustn’t beg.”  Moses waved his stick at them.   We were lucky to get away with our lives.  By this time, I was beginning to suffer from a distinct case of goodwill fatigue.  Maybe it was creeping old age but, by then, I’d had enough of children for the time being.  My benign smile was beginning to droop.

The smooth tarmac and the White Horse Inn of Kabale improved our spirits.  This hotel, though patronised by the President of Uganda on his forays into this region, had seen better days.  The restaurant was particularly grand and well decorated and we had the waiter’s full attention being the only diners at one point.  The lounge boasted a vigorous log fire which seemed strange and out of place so near the equator.

We spent the time before dinner walking along the main street where we attracted the inevitable posse of children.  We were helped by an armed security guard who kept them at bay while we drank our fizzy Mirinda Fruities (Vimtos) on a café veranda.  “I need to buy books for school” was on of the lines.  If that didn’t work, “I’m an orphan.  Please assist me” would surely follow.  It’s not that we were unsympathetic, but harassing strangers was no long-term solution to their plight.  We’re not monsters, honest.

The road from Kabale to Kisora was appalling.  The word “road” is a ludicrous exaggeration for that dirt track with ruts in it the size of the Grand Canyon.  Huge articulated lorries carrying petrol thundered along sending up clouds of dust and thick, blue diesel fumes while we picked our way between the crevasses,  fearful that the back axle was about to drop off.   Moses stopped to examine the back of the car.  “What’s up?” we asked.  “There’s a strange noise.”  There was a strange noise. He jumped back in the car and resumed the switchback ride strangely unconcerned.  We, however, were haunted by that noise all the way to Kisoro and back knowing that the nearest RAC man was at least 4,000 miles away.    The noise mysteriously disappeared when we hit tarmac again.  But sometimes, when dusk falls and the night is still, I can hear that strange noise taunting me from afar.

It had taken 2 hours to travel 50 miles and our internal organs were playing musical chairs.  My knuckles hadn’t been so white since a ride on Disney’s Space Mountain, where the drops weren’t so sheer and I had never thought I might actually die.

The fading light didn’t improve the feeling of gloom and depression that hung in the air over Kisoro.   The poverty seemed no worse than anywhere else, the rubbish tips were just the same, the shops just as drab.  Huge chunks of meat for sale hung outside the butchers’ shops to collect dust and flies just as anywhere else in Uganda.  It was probably the sight of these that gave us our first and enduring bout of diarrhoea.  I apologise for this subject.  It’s a bit like vomit.  I didn’t want to bring it up.  We were very particular about hygiene and washed our hands every time we saw a toilet.  We had bottles of ant-bacterial gel and were careful what we ate. We certainly didn’t eat the gel.  Sometimes we were caught unawares, such as by  the shredded goat meat on the avocado that was hidden under a dollop of 1000 island dressing ( They had, obviously, forgotten to remove  a cess pit from one of the islands before they made the dressing).    I suspect the currency is a great transmitter of disease.   The bacteria on some of the filthy brown notes was probably the only thing holding them together.

The television in the hotel room that night had only 1 channel.  Previously we had had 3,  namely 2 football channels and an African soap much like Neighbours only much slower and worse acting.  Boy was it bad?   I mentioned this lack of choice ( i.e. football or off) to the porter who said he could change the channel from reception.  Which did I want BBC or CNN?   Either would be fine.  A few minutes later the screen flickered and the channel changed to rugby football.  I gave up, exercised choice and switched off.

The Ugandans are crazy about football, especially the English Premier League.  They wear the strips and know who all the footballers are, like er, (who do I know?) Oh, yes, David Beckham.  Slogans painted on their vehicles such as “Jesus lives” and “God is Great” rub shoulders with “Arsenal” and Man. Utd”.  (see Gallery)

There is one good thing about Kisoro.  It’s near the Rwandan border where petrol is a lot cheaper.  Uganda has abolished Road Fund Duty and placed it on petrol.  Our hotel wasn’t in a good location, though, being next to a disco that raved until the early hours.  This was complemented a bit later by the Muslim call to prayer.  All that was missing was a cock crowing.  No, I spoke too soon.  There it goes….. cock-a-doodle-do.  What joy.

A child had left a gaudily painted, plastic lizard on the pool decking, probably as a practical joke to scare the sunbathers.  You could tell it was a toy as the colours were so garish.  Then, it shot off and hid under the decking just like the real thing.  Those Chinese are so clever.

“Can I jump in the water, Mommy?  Can I?  I want to jump in the water, Mommy.  Can I?  Can I jump in the water?”   For two pins I would have put down my book and pushed in the annoying little girl myself.  She jumped in anyway, whether her Mommy allowed it or not.

The boat trip took us to have a closer look at the watering hole.  Every passenger was given a life-jacket.  “Don’t worry,” said the guide.  “We haven’t had an accident in twenty-one years.”  Then, he proceeded to tell us that hippos habitually put their trotters on the side of a boat, tip it up and sink their teeth into the beleaguered swimmers.  They were the most dangerous of African animals, killing more humans than lions, tigers, elephants etc.  I noticed that most people had put on their life-jackets.  We passed a small fishing village on the top of the ridge.  “It’s often attacked,” said the guide.  “Lions, elephants.  A young boy was recently attacked by a hyena.  Hyena, there’s a thing. It doesn’t kill you outright.  It starts eating you, then you die.”  One young woman was looking decidedly green.  The guide invited questions.  “Are there any chameleons around here?”  I asked.

As we sat back after dinner in the restaurant, dreaming of colonial days, there was a flash of lightning and the lights went out.   I bet this doesn’t happen when the Queen visits, I thought.  She was due in November and the hotel was in the process of building a new lodge for her.  In the lightning flashes a large bat could be seen flapping around the room.  And the lights came on.  You could only admire the stiffness of the British upper lip as this huge bat fluttered around peoples’ heads.  No-one batted an eye-lid.  If we had stood up en masse and sung the first verse of Rule Britannia, I would not have been surprised.  One felt prooouuud to be British, old boy.

I did my own big-game hunting that night and bagged 5 mosquitoes lurking in my bathroom.   I looked them straight in the eye and squashed the little blighters before they could attack.  It was a near thing with the big, bull mozzie, which had got the wind up and was nearly upon me.  But my nerve held and gave it both rolled up newspapers right between the eyes.  Unfortunately, the damage was too great or I would have had it stuffed and mounted on my wall.   Shucks.

We dared to leave the hotel and took a walk down the road past the market.  This was an informal affair where a widow might take two tomatoes and an egg to sell, unlike some of the roadside stalls where the variety, quantity and quality of the produce might even challenge Mr Sainsbury.  Like the Ugandans, he should consider building his tomatoes into little towers to attract custom.

Walking past the market was a terrifying affair.  Everybody just stood and stared.  Surely they’d seen white people before?   The children waved at us and shouted.  We hoped it wasn’t “Whites go home”.  But it sounded friendly enough.  And they were smiling.  We were approached by a relatively well-dressed teenage girl who was happy to chat in English.  “Can you assist me with some money?” she asked.  With such poverty in Uganda how can you criticise people for being driven to begging?  Children learn it from an early age.  But it doesn’t feel right.  There is a fine line between asking for help and asking with menaces.  The old adage “It is better to give a man a fishing rod than just one fish” is very true. We can give, we should give, but it’s best done through an agency such as Compassion where the money can be used wisely where it is most needed.

We were due to visit 2 of Sally’s sponsor children at their Compassion project about 10 miles from Kasese.  While we waited for Nelson, the project director, to accompany us, Georgina struck up a conversation with the hotel doorman talking about his family and Compassion.  “No sign of Nelson yet?” I asked when we were alone. “Oh, I thought I was talking to him,” she replied.  No wonder the poor doorman looked bemused.

The project was about a kilometre off the main road down a dirt track.  For a small rural community there seemed to be people everywhere.  We had not anticipated the welcome we were about to receive.   A mass of children, mostly in blue, school uniform surrounded the car.  Every eye was fixed on us.  We quite overwhelmed. It was the beginning of their school holidays and they had come especially to meet us.  The adults were lining up to shake our hands, Gladys, Festo, Charity, Rock and Nelson again.  They were genuinely pleased to meet us. We felt like royalty.  The buildings were basic but functional.  The main building was the church, made of brick and with a mud floor.  There were holes for windows which allowed outsiders to stand and watch the proceedings inside.  The buildings fitted well into the prevailing ambience of dire poverty. The children were sent inside while we were shown the classrooms (basic), the toilet block (clean), the dirt area with a rusty roundabout that served as a playground and the small office block.  It was clear that they had very few resources.  One small boy kicked around a “ball” made from a screwed up plastic bag.  But the atmosphere of the place was one of love and care.  The project children seemed to be thriving on it.  There was a stark difference between them and the children not selected.  Only one child in a family is usually chosen to participate in a project.  The project children were generally bigger, healthier and certainly better dressed.  The others were ragged and many had runny noses.  One child, no bigger than a toddler, was 8 years old.  Another wore a large, ripped tee-shirt which would only fit if he put both head and arm through the neck hole.

The children, gathered in the church, sang us songs of joy and hope.  They smiled and they clapped.  They praised Jesus, their Saviour.  They had precious little else to give him.  Sally taught them a song.

We visited Loyce and Jennifer with their families at home.   These were mud huts with straw roofs.  Inside, the few rooms were small, black and empty, apart from maybe a bench, a few chairs or a bed.  The kitchen was a stone shelf with a fire below. The few presents that Sally had brought for her children were the only splashes of colour in this bleak environment.

Loyce was being brought up by her grandmother who looked haggard and exhausted.  Her mother was ill.  Jennifer’s parents looked worn down by the grinding effort to survive.  Her father was pale and looked a physical wreck.  Nelson was very worried about this family.  I asked what they might have for breakfast.  He became animated and struggled to contain a growing sense of righteous indignation.  “How can you talk of breakfast, lunch or dinner when you don’t know where your next meal is coming from?  They are lucky if they have one meal a day. This family has nothing. Eh? Literally nothing,”  I felt ashamed.  He began to calm down.  I had taken the point.  And this was just one family in a country full of desperate families.

Back at the project I had no appetite for the meal they had provided.  It is a solemn point of culture to feed visitors.  There was boiled goat and chicken, rice, cassava (a cooked root), pineapple and the ubiquitous matoke (cooked plantain and Uganda’s national dish).  I tried the goat but it fought back as I tried to swallow it.  The chicken gave in more easily.  Though it was unfamiliar to our western tastes, moulded by the likes of Colonel Sanders,  this must have been a feast to the families we had just visited.  I sincerely wished they hadn’t squandered it on us.  They were so generous and gave us gifts of a hat, bag and pot before we left.  These people, full of love and care, were shining lights in a very dark Uganda.   Loyce had even given Sally a live chicken and had dutifully tied its legs together.  For a moment, I thought Sally was figuring out how it might fit into her hand luggage on the plane, but she came to the conclusion it was better to leave it at the project.  Good decision.

The road from Entebbe to Kampala was being radically improved.  Gangs of workmen and women were clearing rubble, planting trees and bushes.  Mostly, the women did the work while the men looked on.  Moses took great delight in telling us that this was because the Queen (of England) was coming. I looked for a hint of irony in his eyes when he talked of the Queen with such excitement, but there was none.  He seemed genuinely excited.  He wished she would visit more often so that more roads would be improved.

Moses also explained that the Money Exchange at Entebbe airport had short-changed us.  The woman at the counter had deliberately “picked” (Ugandan for stolen) some of the notes from the bundle.  We had given this money to Moses for petrol but some notes were missing.  “They prey on new visitors who don’t know the currency.  And the women are worse than the men,” he explained.  “They are more cunning”.  “Well, isn’t that true the world over,” I thought, but didn’t dare say it out loud.

As we entered Kampala in the early hours of the morning, a faint mist lay like gossamer over the city.  It was only when we entered the cloud that we could smell the diesel fumes in the air.  Lorries, buses and cars all belched out thick, acrid, blue fumes from their exhausts.  “Diesel engines cost more to service than petrol ones, so people don’t bother,” Moses explained as the lorry in front disappeared in a cloud of it’s own exhaust.  It was amusing to think how paranoid we, in Britain, were about our meagre “carbon footprints” when other parts of the world were indiscriminately spewing out huge quantities of pollution.  I don’t mean that we should do the same, but let’s not be so paranoid about our relatively much smaller contribution.  If you spend any time in Kampala, pack an oxygen mask along with your malaria tablets.  The pollution will get you long before the mosquitoes do.  Or, maybe the maniac drivers on those hugely congested roads will.  If there were a Highway Code (and I very much doubt it) there would be just two rules, viz. 1)  if you see a gap go for it at great speed.  2) Ignore all other drivers unless they are two inches from hitting you.  Our driver, Moses, was a professional Kampalan driver and he nearly knocked down just one motorcyclist.  If I had been driving, boy, would there have been carnage?  I’m glad we didn’t hire a car as we now would either be lying in the Kampala morgue or still trying to find our way out of “the city with no street signs”.  Accidents are a common occurrence.  A few days later we saw a car drive into a motorbike.  The pillion passenger (no helmet) neatly jumped of the bike mid strike and nonchalantly walked away as if he’d performed the same trick a thousand times before.

We hadn’t realised how ubiquitous private security guards were in Uganda.  Two burly guards clutching huge shotguns stood outside the currency exchange office in Kampala.  Were they expecting trouble?  We decided not to stay long enough to find out.  It was unnerving to see a line of young men on motorbikes watch our every move as we left the office with our money.  We jumped into the car where Moses had parked hoping it was his.  Fortunately, it was.  As we sped off,  I nervously looked out of the rear window but no bikers were following.   Moses knew all the short cuts.  To avoid congestion he turn a turn and we ended up in pot-hole city.  The road was like a Swiss cheese.  We zig-zagged around the biggest craters and even had to do a cross-country stint over some rough ground to avoid disappearing down a black hole.  The road led, unsurprisingly, to the car spare part centre of Kampala.  Mountains of rusty metal, salvaged, no doubt, from previous wrecks, were piled high by the sides of the road.  Nearly all the vehicles in Uganda are Japanese.  Most are minibus/taxis in various stages of disintegration and full of people.  They are legally allowed to take 14 people.  The one we went on had 19.  The law is regularly flouted.

Dilapidated villages and shanty huts line most of the roads in Uganda.  There was hardly a stretch of road free of buildings.  They were mainly structures cobbled together from odd scraps of wood with a piece of corrugated iron placed on the top.  These were homes to, perhaps two adults and four children.  Some were superior and made with mud bricks.  They looked like rows of garages.  Often they were painted bright yellow or shocking pink.  They reflected the battle between the two mobile phone companies.  The pink were for Celtel, the yellow for MTN.  They seemed to be evenly matched.  Well, I suppose it was one way of earning some shillings and getting your house painted for free. Apparently, this is a country where the average villager travels up to two kilometres to make a call and the waiting list for access to a fixed line telephone is 3.6 years, if you can afford it.  Some were shops, having a small pile of tomatoes, maize or similar placed outside for sale.  The towns and larger villages had shops with piles of mattresses outside, beds or even coffins for sale.  There was probably a good trade in the last item.  The roads seemed to be centres of Ugandan life.  Even in the most remote stretches there were people walking along the road.  They didn’t seem to be walking anywhere in particular.  They were just walking.  The men tended just to stand and stare blankly.  The local “gut-rot” made from Sorghum, a grass seed resembling corn, maybe partly responsible for this, together with the cultural tradition that the women do all the work.

We spent that night at the Margherita Hotel overlooking the Ruwenzori mountain range on the border of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.   Someone said there were gorillas in those mountains.  But he may have meant guerrillas.  I was too afraid to ask.   We didn’t stay long enough to find out.

It’s good how you can choose your own film/game/music entertainment on your own monitor.  And, you don’t need a twelve year old computer geek to explain the controls.  Good job, since there weren’t any around.  Georgina sussed the controls, no problem.  After the film she started to play computer “Patience”.  She’s good at it having been married to me for yonks.*  William Wilberfororce and his “Amazing Grace” proved too taxing for my exhausted brain and I gave up after about ten minutes.  It was a shame because the small bald man with the continuously shocked expression (some Duke or other) was turning out to be quite amusing.

I defy anyone to sleep comfortably in an aeroplane seat (economy, that is).  The back is too upright.  It reclines about 2 inches, max.  I lean this way and then that.  I stick my leg out to the left and nearly trip up an old woman going to the toilet.  I stick out my leg to the right and kick Georgina in the shins.  I feel hunched up and can’t breathe.  I throw my arms over my head.  I still can’t breathe.   Maybe, if I lie in the aisle….?  Three hours later I wake up….still breathing, just in time for breakfast.  It’s funny how a tiny omelette with an even smaller piece of bacon and a cocktail sausage leave you thinking you’ve just had a full sized meal

There was a camera at the nose of the plane which allowed you to see take-offs & landings from the pilot’s point of view.  You could not only feel the wheels hitting the runway and bouncing up and down for five minutes and the swerving off the white line.  You could see it too. More white-haired passengers got off the plane than had got on.

When you leave the plane at Dubai the wall of heat smacks you in the face.  You could cook an egg on the tarmac.  Actually,  my omelet had tasted slightly strange.  The inside of Dubai airport looked curiously familiar.  Then it clicked.  It was Lakeside Shopping Mall.  The shops and shiny floors were the same.  The chromes and plastics were the same.  The ethnic mix with the occasional burqa was the same.  Even the queues at the women’s restrooms were the same.  We said goodbye to Dubai and, after a quick stop at Addis Ababa we landed at Entebbe Airport, Uganda.  Have you ever tried skimming a smooth pebble over a lake to see how many times you can make it bounce?  I swear our pilot was doing that with our plane ever time we landed.

The entertainment at baggage reclaim was watching an Alsatian dog clamber over the bags as they made their way over the moving belt.  If its job was to knock every tenth bag onto the floor, it did it well.  It didn’t find any drugs and its handler seemed indifferent anyway.

Isn’t it good to be met at an airport, especially if you don’t know the place, the people or their customs?  What a relief to find Moses with his car waiting for us.  And there were monkeys roaming wild.  This was Africa.  We had arrived.