Fish 'n no chips at the beach

I wasn’t expecting to be posting a blog relating to the last day in Uganda but we’ve had an excellent day and it feels like a fitting end to the part of this that relates to Soroti.  We left the Soroti Site at 6.30am after picking up a passenger, Peter, who we know from the Pamba PAG church. He was taking some papers to Kampala for his father – note this is the only reliable way to transport documents from Soroti.  We were happy for him to join us. He would make the 8hour journey with us, conduct his business and if he finished in time, get the afternoon bus back – which would take a lot longer than 8 hours. We decided it would be a good business initiative to set up a secure postal/delivery service between Northern towns and Kampala.

We stopped for a very mediocre and expensive breakfast at a new roadside café Tom wanted to try. The Rolex were very poor – basically an omelette wrapped in an old dry chapatti – no comparison to Pamba where they are fresh and piping hot and the egg soaks into the chapatti (how I’m going to miss them – and Michael says we missed the guy who makes the best!).  In the market they were 30p, can you believe they charged £1.50 at the cafe?  And the toliets…. Ok but not as good as the ones Michael stopped at on the way up.  For those who wonder about these things, this was my first trip without having to experience the joy of a pit latrine. Yipee!

Eventually we arrived in Kampala and went to visit Michael’s friend Maggie at her workplace. Kampala is a fascinating place – shanty towns, and huge new office blocks that wouldn’t be out of place in Leeds. The usual roadside stalls, and modern shopping centres. A big difference from the rural north is that women wear trousers and jewellery. The most striking thing is the traffic – cars, buses, taxis, bikes, all jostling for every inch of road space. At roundabouts the rule appears to be that the person with most nerve pushes through the traffic while other drivers weave round towards their exit.

We needed a plan as we had a few hours to fill, and Maggie suggested the beach! This turned out to be a brilliant plan and the four of us (tom & I and Maggie & Michael) set off for the Lido at Entebbe. We arrived to find a sandy beach on the shores of Lake Victoria with birds to watch, water to paddle in and a deserted seafront bar. My first ever visit to an African beach and it was drizzling and cloudy!

We spent an excellent afternoon chatting, laughing, and sharing a very tasty fried Tilapia. Fish and chips at Filey is no match for Tilapia at Lake Victoria. It was a brilliant way to end our trip, relaxing with our new friends.

The parting was all the more poignant for the special end to a truly fantastic trip.

I’m writing this waiting for the flight but I guess it will be posted when I’m awake enough to do it in Barnsley…