We've arrived!

Well! After not going further afield than Belgium for 15 years...the 6 of us have arrived in Namugongo, Uganda (or Kyaliwajjala to be more specific!) until mid July. Similarities to South-East London include the presence of brightly coloured birds, extraordinary traffic, and the superiority of local knowledge over google maps when it comes to avoiding aforementioned traffic. I'll let Zoe mention the differences! Flight highlights were getting reacquainted with solitaire and being picked up at the airport by Derrick from Living Word in an authentic Ugandan 'dron'? The definite lowlight was the 2 hour stop at Kigali airport (the plane does a round route between Istanbul, Kigali and Entebbe) at 1am when they woke us all up and then cleaned the plane around us before taking off again. Since then, we've borrowed a wonderful car from some friends and driven it back here via a surreal evening drive through Kampala's dense traffic which included a traffic jam not dissimilar to the one in the Top Gear Uganda special (series 19 episode 1)! International Needs and Living Word contacts start in earnest on Monday...more updates soon. Current projects include trying to find a football club for the kids and we're going to try out the Kampala rock-climbing scene today; I'll report back. Thanks for messages and prayers; much appreciated!

Thoughts from Zoe

When we arrived, we went to sleep and slept for hours and hours! It's very different here and the temperature is lovely in the morning and the evening but unpleasantly hot at midday. It's very fun and weird to just be able to pick oranges and bananas from the trees and I've already tried sugarcane which is very sweet and stringy. We're not allowed to drink from the tap, so we have to buy filtered water in big bottles. We get stared at a lot (it's like we're celebrities). We've already seen about eight monkeys, and I've held a lizard and its only our third day here! We are missing everyone back in England and we promise to keep you updated,

Zoë