Planes, pests and plumbing!!
Friday 9th February
We arrived back at Kagando yesterday evening, 48 hours after
leaving home.
The flight out took us on a little mini tour of East Africa.
The flight we were supposed to be on from Kigali was cancelled and we were put
on a flight flying to Entebbe via Nairobi. All went smoothly however and we
were relieved to reach Entebbe to find our cases arriving as well!
We spent the first night at Whitecrest guesthouse. On
arrival we found a group of vervet monkeys outside the window of our room and
one on the balcony looking in at the window hoping to get in! After hanging
around for 15 minutes or so they all decided to head off as clearly they weren’t
going to be allowed into our room!
We travelled by car yesterday which was fine except for a
section of the road before Fort Portal that the Chinese Road engineers (who seem
to be everywhere in Uganda these days) were trying to improve resulting in long
sections driven on a murram surface which slowed us down somewhat.
On arrival at Karibu house where we will be staying (as we
did on the last occasion we were here), we were met by our lodger, a rather fat
mouse who scuttled behind the wardrobe! Ann is keen to institute chemical
warfare whereas I am more inclined to take a more lenient approach!
One near disaster was the ball cock and valve on the toilet
were malfunctioning causing a continual overflow. On inspection it became clear
that the arm of the ball cock had been mounted the wrong way us but during the inspection
process the ball dropped off the ballcock arm! Eventually it proved possible to
fix the problem but not before some very stressful moments trying to effect the
repair.
In the hospital today there were many familiar faces who
were very genuinely happy to see us again. There is the ongoing issues of lack
of drugs and materials, including the main treatment for malaria, the rapid
diagnostic tests for malaria and also the main antibiotic in use for most
infections but hopefully these can be reobtained before too long but it was a
reminder if indeed one was needed of just how precarious the situation with
regard to medical care can be here at times.
Nearly succesful repairing the cistern!! |
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