Good Morning Kampala

Morning All.

I have a spare 5 minutes to update my blog, so even though I don't have a lot to say I thought I would share my experience so for.

The 'gang' met at Heathrow Airport at 8.30am yesterday morning, under the giant H. The 'gang' I am referring to consists of 13 colleagues from companies across the water industry, (From Scottish Water to Affinity and from Northern Ireland Water to the Environment Agency) and 4 from WaterAid.

The flight was 8 hours direct to Entebbe airport, which is near enough on the Equator. One of the most common questions that I was asked before travelling was, 'Are you afraid of Ebola?'... well I wasn't. Arriving at the airport and being greeted by staff in plastic aprons and surgeons masks taking your temperature and issuing hand sanitizer was however a little bit daunting. It was a stark remember how real the threat of ebola is, especially here in Africa. We are lucky to be able to joke a about coming home with Ebola (the most common thing people said to me before travelling) but here the threat is a bit closer to home. On the other hand its nice to know that Uganda are taking the virus seriously.

After leaving the airport, my wallet struggling under the weight of 400,000 shillings, we met with Antonio and Spiero ( I really hope that I have remembered/spelt their names correctly). We boarded our coach ready for the hour transfer to our hotel in Kampala. About a mile down the road one of the group realised the driver didn't have any headlights on. After struggling to find them we pulled up at the side of the road (next to a man with a large gun)  the driver investigated further. Long story short, a fleet of taxi cabs had to be called to take us onward to our destination, leaving me too tired to wonder what on earth the bus driver was going to do with no lights on a dark road after midnight.

Kampala has a population of roughly 1.6 million people and covers 73 square miles built on seven hills, there seemed to be a fair few of the population partying at clubs while we made our way to the hotel.The rest of our journey was incident free, there were some interesting sights and smells along the way, the most interesting of which was some giant floodlights in between upright sheets of corrugated metal. Our driver, James, later informed us that these were set up to catch Grasshoppers to cook and eat. How delightful.

Anyway, I must get showered now, we have a long 6 hour journey to Soroti today.

Will update you all again soon.

Adam