Friday 9th November 2012
Our flight landed in Entebbe at local time 10pm – 3 hours ahead of UK time, having touched down at Kigali in Rwanda for an hour to pick up new passengers. It was pretty warm when we disembarked, so after stripping off a few layers we collected our cases and went to find the pre-arranged transport to the Boma Guest House. Sarah was the first to spot the handwritten card held high with her name on it and introduced the group to our driver Howard, whose name was also written on the card. Before we could load the car we all needed to exchange some money as it is almost impossible to get Ugandan Schillings in the UK. We checked out a few banks for the best exchange rate and duly handed over the suggested £200 receiving back 800,000 Ugandan schillings in return! Stuffing that many notes in my ‘holiday purse’ was certainly the first challenge of the trip! Armed with our stashes of cash we went back to find Howard whose first question was “Do you know my name”. Of course we all thought it was a simple reminder, a sort of ‘Welcome to Uganda Test’ to make sure that we had been taking notice and had remembered his name. But there was a very different reason for the question - it turned out that Howard Fall – the other name alongside Sarah Hoyle’s name on the airport welcome card - was in fact the name of another guest that due to be picked up and driven to the same guest house as us! Our driver was actually called Nelson and Howard had apparently lost patience waiting whilst we all changed our money and so had called himself another taxi! Just as well actually because he would have definitely struggled to fit into the 2 vehicles that Nelson had brought once the 7 of us were seated and our mountain of luggage loaded!
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| The COCH Team |
Our flight landed in Entebbe at local time 10pm – 3 hours ahead of UK time, having touched down at Kigali in Rwanda for an hour to pick up new passengers. It was pretty warm when we disembarked, so after stripping off a few layers we collected our cases and went to find the pre-arranged transport to the Boma Guest House. Sarah was the first to spot the handwritten card held high with her name on it and introduced the group to our driver Howard, whose name was also written on the card. Before we could load the car we all needed to exchange some money as it is almost impossible to get Ugandan Schillings in the UK. We checked out a few banks for the best exchange rate and duly handed over the suggested £200 receiving back 800,000 Ugandan schillings in return! Stuffing that many notes in my ‘holiday purse’ was certainly the first challenge of the trip! Armed with our stashes of cash we went back to find Howard whose first question was “Do you know my name”. Of course we all thought it was a simple reminder, a sort of ‘Welcome to Uganda Test’ to make sure that we had been taking notice and had remembered his name. But there was a very different reason for the question - it turned out that Howard Fall – the other name alongside Sarah Hoyle’s name on the airport welcome card - was in fact the name of another guest that due to be picked up and driven to the same guest house as us! Our driver was actually called Nelson and Howard had apparently lost patience waiting whilst we all changed our money and so had called himself another taxi! Just as well actually because he would have definitely struggled to fit into the 2 vehicles that Nelson had brought once the 7 of us were seated and our mountain of luggage loaded!
It was about a 15 minute journey in the dark to the Boma
Guest House so it was difficult to get much of a picture of the surrounding
area or to make any first impression of my inaugural visit to Africa. Somewhat
alarmingly we were greeted at the Boma Guest House by a smiling armed security
guard but I was informed that this was the norm in Uganda. Howard and other
staff helped us to unload our cases and we were allocated our rooms. I shared
with Carolyn our Pharmacy Technician and ours was a fairly large room with a
double plus a single bed, both draped with the obligatory mosquito nets. We got what we needed from our cases for the
night and then joined the others in the bar for a cold beer – just what we
needed after a long day. As I went to sleep I was thinking “Well this is it,
there is no going back now. I have arrived in Uganda, and my African Adventure
is about to begin!”
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