My other big trip here in Uganda has been to Murchison Falls, a vast waterfall on the Nile several hours downriver of my current home in Bujagali, with a game reserve and rhino sanctuary nearby. I travelled up with a friend, joining another six people at Red Chilli Backpackers in Kampala for the six hour drive north-west. I’m getting more used to journeys here now: the long, dusty roads, the massive billboards advertising beer and cooking oil, the enormous speed bumps at every trading centre, the hands of bananas, meat on a stick, bottles of water and cassava chips thrust through [View Full Entry]

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It’s not all work, work, work here, of course! I’ve treated myself to two amazing trips while I’ve been here, the first to go Gorilla tracking in Bwindi, over in the west of the country, and the second, last weekend, up to Murchison Falls, around six hours north-west of Kampala. The Afro-alpine landscape of Bwindi (sometimes known by the wonderfully romantic title ‘Bwindi Impenetrable Forest’) is very different from Bujagali, and although the distance is little more than from London to Manchester, even in a private vehicle the journey took us fifteen (yes, rea [View Full Entry]

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It’s hard to believe, but I’m now at the end of week four of my seven weeks in Uganda. The past few weeks have been incredibly busy, both with work and socialising! Access to the internet is limited, and power has been pretty erratic, so I’m grabbing an opportunity to upload this now and have another entry half-written to follow soon. Struggling with photos at present as the uploader is playing up, but have added them to the previous two so you can start to get a picture and managed to get a few in here. Loads more to come later. [View Full Entry]

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It’s mid-afternoon, I’ve finished work and had a lazy late lunch overlooking the Nile, and now I’m settling in outside my banda for the afternoon in the shade to do some writing/reading/thinking dozing. I’m starting to settle into a nice African pace of life now, and getting to know the area a little better. Sunday began with a guided walk around the village, led by Muganda and Oko, two 17-year-old local guys who are earning a little extra cash to see them through secondary school. They introduced us to their families and to some of the locals and showed us the [View Full Entry]

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I’m trying to avoid sounding like a stuck record, banging on about contrasts, but have I experienced some over the past 24 hours!! Joburg to Entebbe, Uganda’s airport, is only a four-hour flight north, so I was glad of the check-in time at the start to process some of my experiences and prepare for the next stage of the adventure. And by huge, astonishing coincidence, I bumped into Carolyn, a friend from Hampstead Quaker Meeting, queuing for the flight! She was on her way to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) with two African colleagues and is working for Peace [View Full Entry]

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Apologies - no pics for now as the connection speed here in Uganda is pretty slow! Coming soon... We spent the last three days of my South African trip in Cape Town, soaking up the atmosphere of the harbour with its glamorous shops and restaurants, visiting the museums and driving up the stunning coastline to Pringle Bay, past the vineyards, the mountains and the golden beaches with their communities of pastel-coloured holiday homes. The Cape - green, rainy and much more familiar to my northern European eyes, felt much more relaxed and also a little more racially integrated than Joburg. [View Full Entry]

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Well, I’m certainly experiencing the contrasts and contradictions of Africa. In fact I don’t think I’ve ever encountered so many in one week! On Saturday I was taken on a tour of Soweto, the residential district formed from the South West Townships where much of the city’s black population was compelled to live (under curfew) during the years of apartheid. It might seem voyeuristic and intrusive to ‘tour’ a residential district which is home to several million people, many of whom live in desperate poverty. But tourism has helped to create jobs and i [View Full Entry]

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And here I am, in Africa. The overnight flight was completely straightforward: a little delayed, but friendly, efficient and uneventful. I found myself slightly obsessed by the flight tracker, which traced our journey out of Zurich and south over Italy, down the centre of Africa and finally to Joburg. When I woke we were passing over DRC, Zambia and then Botswana; I was childishly excited to see that placenames like Stuttgart and Geneva had been replaced by Kinshasa, Lubumbashi, Livingstone, Lusaka and Gaborone. I now have my first ever visa in my passport, a mark of how little travell [View Full Entry]

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About Soft Power Education Here they are in their own words. Should you find yourself thinking: "They sound amazing. I'd like to contribute!" I have good news for you. Go to my JustGiving page and you can donate. "We are a British-registered, non-religious charity and a Ugandan registered NGO. Initially we built two preschools for AIDS Orphans, which we continue to run. Each has around 120 children under the age of five and the preschools p [View Full Entry]

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For anyone who's still wondering what on earth I'm doing, here are some answers to the questions I've been asked a lot over the past few months. What will I be doing? I'm spending the first leg of my trip in South Africa, staying with my friend Sandy. We met through work when she was over here a few years ago - we were both teaching in a school in north London. She runs a language school now in Johannesburg. Sandy's promised to keep me busy with both work and play, so I'm hoping to spend some time meeting her staff [View Full Entry]

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