Save it for the weekend...

Although our main aim in Uganda has been to come and work at Gulu Regional Referral Hospital, Karen and I have been taking the opportunity at weekends to travel away from Gulu and see some more of the beautiful country we're living in! Two places that we must mention are Jinja and Murchison Falls.

Our trip to Jinja was a short one as it is quite far down South from Gulu, about an hour outside of Kampala. However, we made the most of the beautiful scenery by going white water rafting down the Nile! The 32km of rafting (!!) was fantastic fun, if a little exhausting, and was topped off by a barbeque at sunset near the source of the Nile. Amazing!

Last weekend a group of 8 of us from Gulu took a trip to Murchison Falls which was breathtakingly beautiful! It was a bit of a bumpy drive down but once we entered the National Park the scenery was amazing. On the way into the park we saw Giraffes, Buffalo, Deer and Warthogs and, as we waited for the ferry over the Nile to reach our campsite, there were Hippos waiting to greet us! We went on a boat ride down to Murchison Falls which are very impressive. We saw loads of animals on the banks of the river including Elephants and Crocodiles! A game drive on Sunday finished off a brilliant weekend with yet more animal sightings (unfortunately we didn't see lions but there's always next time!)

This weekend we stayed in Gulu as our link lead, Marian Surgenor, had organised for us to do a very important job! She had sourced a donation of some Manchester United and Manchester City kits that we had the great honour of distributing to 2 local football teams. We went to a village called Awach and delivered the eagerly awaited strips to the players. Awach is a small village not far from Gulu where our contact and guide 'Dr Freddy' grew up. The drive up to Awach was very scenic and as we took in the sights we learned from Freddy that there had been around 10,000 people living in an IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) Camp there during the war. It is really hard to imagine that number of people in such a small place. Freddy said that the road that we travelled on had been a danger spot where many abductions and murders had taken place. A vision that is difficult to imagine when for us it had been a serene drive through the lush Ugandan countryside. On arrival it seemed as though every family from the whole village had turned up to watch the teams play and they were all so welcoming. It's really hard to put into words how electric the atmosphere was. As we looked around at such a fantastic community it was hard to imagine the suffering that many of the people there had experienced some 3 years ago.
We had a formal handover of the kit with speeches and photos, after which an official presented us with some beautiful hand woven baskets. We both felt so humbled to be there and to have such an incredible welcome. Some of the players were playing barefoot or in flip flops so we're hoping that we'll manage to obtain some boots for them at some point in the future. We watched the match which ended Awach 1 Paicho 0. The crowd from Awach were going wild!!!!!