5 July 2008

(PHOTOS: VIEW OF THE GARDEN FROM OUR ROOM AT THE BOMA GUEST HOUSE, ENTEBBE; A TYPICAL BODA BODA)

Hello from Kim!

Well we are here now, up to day 3.

We left NZ on Monday 30^th June, and stayed with friends in Sydney for 2 days. That was really nice as it allowed us to wind down a bit after all the rushing around we had to do before we left. Despite spending every waking hour doing the packing, we still hadn’t finished by the time the removals people came and were frantically throwing things into boxes while they were there!

The hardest part for me by far, was having to leave my cat, Frankie. Even though he is being looked after by the neighbours and their house is his second home and they love him to pieces, he’s very much ‘my’ cat and is like my shadow. He spends all his time with me, waits at the end of the drive for me or inside the front door. I cried every day.Kira was equally upset and still cries about him.

We left Sydney on 2^nd July and flew to Dubai (17 hours) then onto Ethiopia and into Entebbe, Uganda on 3^rd in the afternoon.

We were very fortunate that all our flights and connections went to plan and it was as easy as it could have been.

Jordan seems to be taking it all in his stride and is very laid back about it all. He has been talking about buying some shoe polish to blacken his face in order to fit in with the locals (!), but other than that is doing really well.

Kira is doing well, though it’s been a lot harder for her. She has a lovely life in NZ – she loves school, has some really good friends, loves her hobbies, loves Frankie, etc etc. Understandably she sees no reason to leave a life she loves, and has had a few tears now and then. When we arrived at Entebbe airport she was sick.
We know she’ll be OK, though it’s hard when she has some tough times.
I bought her a diary yesterday which she likes to write daily, and she’s been writing about the nice things that she’s experienced.

We are staying at The Boma guest house in Entebbe (http://www.traveluganda.co.ug/thebomaentebbe/) which we stayed at last time – it’s lovely and the staff are very friendly. It seems to be patronised by expats. It has beautiful gardens and a vast array of birds who provide some lovely birdsong.

The weather is nice and warm, we sleep under mosquito nets and have the fan going during the night to keep us cool. There are little lizards roaming around on the walls. They are good to have around as they eat flies and mosquitoes.

We showed the children a plant we discovered last time. It’s one where when you touch the leaves, they close up and look just like a twig. It must be a defence mechanism, because it looks dead once you’ve touched it. Kira runs up and down the paths touching all the leaves!

Today we went round the Botanical Gardens. They have such lovely trees and plants here, including sausage trees and cannon ball trees. They also have elephant apple trees – certainly not one to sit under and have a picnic as the apples are enormous, very hard, and just fall out of the tree. You’d be knocked unconscious if one landed on your head.

There are over 100 termite mounds in the gardens – apparently the Queen Termite lives a metre deep into the mound, is around 9” long and tastes very nice when fried...

We also saw a huge trail of safari ants – very impressive in how they operate, but ones to be avoided. One managed to climb onto Jordan’s trouser leg without him realising. The next thing he knew, it had crawled up and bitten him on the shoulder…

We leave here tomorrow and are going to the capital Kampala