Freight, Vehicles and life in Kampala.

We are glad to be able to say that we now have all our belongings here in Kampala.  This followed one trip down to Entebbe to meet Henry, a freight agent, at 3pm – which turned out to be 5pm, to sign some customs forms and handover my passport.  The following day (Friday), I had to meet the same official at 9am outside Kampala central police station to give him the keys to the trunks (which he hadn’t asked for the day before), and he turned up at 9.30.  We then had a meeting with all the staff at the Baptist Union of Uganda (BUU) office in Kampala – but not the President and General Secretary because their clutch blew up.  We did enjoy meeting the other staff however, who were all very friendly.  Alex and I then started heading towards Entebbe to meet Henry at 2pm.  Having discovered that the freight wouldn’t be ready by then we detoured to a tyre dealer to replace the front tyres on the Landcruiser.  We got to Entebbe at 3.30 and then spent another two hours in the airport waiting for various other customs forms and checks to be completed before finally collecting all our freight at 6pm and then driving back to get back into Kampala before dark.  Of course we didn’t make it before dark and had the joy of fighting our way back through night-time traffic across the city – jostling through heavily laden bicycles, kamikaze motor-bike taxis, swarming mini-bus taxis (Matatus), police trucks, beeping cars and wandering pedestrians.  We even followed a guy on roller-blades who was hanging off the wheel-arch of a Toyota as it pulled him around roundabouts and over potholes!  Driving in Africa is an art which we are rapidly re-acquiring.

On Saturday we had a day to ourselves and the opportunity to meet up with old friends in Kampala, so we strapped Samuel into his car-seat and turned the key to a deafening silence – a flat battery in the Landcruiser!  Luckily we were able to borrow our colleagues RAV4 and made it into town where we enjoyed meeting two old friends and doing some shopping in “Garden City” – where you can buy just about anything.  That afternoon I had a lesson in how to use jump-leads as we jump-started the Landcruiser off the RAV4 – which we had to do again on Sunday.  We will be getting new batteries before the long journey to Kasese next week.

We went to a local Baptist Church on Sunday which had services in English which “only” last 2 hours.  After 1.5 hours Sam was fed up so I took him outside where he enjoyed meeting two young Ugandan babies sitting with their mothers outside the church.  This afternoon we enjoyed a fantastic BBQ with the couple and two other families who are the BMS team in Uganda, and Sam enjoyed playing with their children.  We’ve really enjoyed getting to know them this week – as well as being very friendly and good fun, they are all older than us and have valuable experiences of parenthood in Uganda with older children which we can learn from.

Thanks again for all your prayers and best wishes - especially that everything turned up in one piece!