Last time I arrived in Uganda in the winter I came from Addis Ababa. This time I came from Dubai, setting off cruising above the highest building in the world, and ending up crossing the great African plains.
My favourite part was flying over Kenya and I became very excited when I looked down and saw Lake Turkana. It was 36 years earlier that I had stood on the shores, having walked all the way from Ilaut. That journey has gone down in my own history as the most difficult and dangerous. In 1983 we were attacked by lions, ran out of food and water, lost all our expedition money, one camel and left several camel drivers under a bush to get over their malaria on their own. We had even left our own people under acacia trees as they became too weak to walk.
It’s therefore not surprising that I was really moved as we flew over the southern shores of the lake. I strained to see elephant below me but my eyes didn’t have the benefit of my glasses which I couldn’t be bothered to get from the overhead compartment.
After we passed over the Ugandan border, we left dry and dusty Kenya behind and the landscape immediately turn green and lush.
On arrival at Entebbe, we queued up alongside posters educating people about the recent ebola outbreak near the Congo border. My family were already worried about it and I had dismissed their worries. Now I took a photo and sent it to them.
NGO planes were lined up at Entebbe, a sign of things to come….. so many NGOs in Uganda, so many [hashtag] whitesaviours in the country. Someone joked that it was because the climate was so good that Uganda attracted so many NGO’s. There’s probably some truth in that – the climate is fantastic.