Breakfast of banana pancakes

I awoke to beautiful singing from behind my room this morning, Rosaline the maid told me she sang for the “joy of the Lord”. After breakfast (banana pancakes!) and a quick trip to the supermarket to get water for the next few days, we visited (on my son Henry’s recommendation) the Ugandan Wildlife and Education Centre, set on the shores of Lake Victoria. Our journey of only about 2 miles provided Caroline with her first TIA (this is Africa) look when the boy on the motorcycle who offered to show us the way in return for a few Ugandan shillings got lost himself and had to ask for directions.

The zoo was almost like being on safari, with animals in much bigger enclosures and closer to their native environment than European zoos.

This elephant was orphaned when poachers shot his mother when 2 weeks old, and is now 6 years old and may have met Henry when he was here 3 years ago.

We are now enjoying our afternoon of R&R at the Lake Victoria Hotel, before a 0600 start tomorrow for MAF flight to Arua.

It has been great to see Fred, who greeted me at Entebbe wearing his Brighton and  Hove Albion FC scarf on Saturday evening, and his son Sunday who has a degree in law, but sadly cannot get work in Kampala as he is a refugee.

We met Caroline and Jane on Sunday afternoon and I was relieved to be reunited with my antimalarial tablets,
carelessly left in the kitchen at 0200 on Saturday on my departure.

Much to Caroline’ s chagrin Fred and I managed to watch the Seagulls beat Newcastle United (ironically Caroline’s family team) over supper in the guesthouse last night before a few tasty emails were exchanged between Fred and the Lamb family!

We are all set for tomorrow’s journey, pants (970 pairs!!!), laptops, medical books, baby shawls and caps have now been repacked, and we look forward to seeing all our many South Sudanese friends over the next few days. Expect a good few more TIA moments (patience is such an African quality) but we are all excited.

With love from Jonathan and the team!
Dr Jonathan Cullis