Luxuriating in Luxury

10th July 2010
I’m writing this from a rather more elegant location than normal – I’m staying in a rather luxurious resort in Uganda (I’m on R&R), courtesy of my sister-in-laws very kind parents. At first when they offered I was rather hesitant, partly because of shyness at accepting their hospitality, but mainly because I felt rather overwhelmed at the idea of all that luxury – somewhat different from Kindu! Also because staying at a resort means that it’s not possible to walk out the front door and have the freedom to go here or there as you choose. However, after arriving at the guesthouse I originally booked in Entebbe (which I went to due to first due to miscommunication) then staying at this resort seemed a lot more appealing. Entebbe was a lot more spread out than I anticipated, which put me off going anywhere, and my room at the guesthouse wasn’t that much nicer than being at Kindu. Whilst I have been marvelling at the luxury here, it’s also been more normal than I expected – it’s ok to walk around in t-shirt and flip-flops! And when I say marvelling at the luxury, I mean things like ‘wow….hot water!!!’ and ‘mmm….pizza’ as well as being shocked at how much water a toilet uses. I was also slightly taken aback at the tarmac roads, painted lines on the road and road signs when I arrived in Rwanda. So you can see why I was worried about feeling overwhelmed by a luxury resort – fortunately, it’s fairly normal here and it’s ok to meander around in t-shirts and flip-flops. I’m still getting used to summoning over a waiter with a flick of my hand, ready to cater to my every need…. I haven’t found it particularly hard to adjust, though I did find myself boiling water with the kettle and cooling it rather than using the water bottles placed in the mini-bar…and it’s obviously been far too long since I’ve had a shower as I got confused with what to do with one of those non-slip shower mats that you place in the bath – I thought you were supposed to put it on the floor to dry yourself on… I only remembered after my shower what it was!!!
I even ordered Room Service for the first time ever. Most of the time I don’t stay in places with room service, and in those that I have it wouldn’t really cross my mind to get someone to bring me food. But as I’m staying in this rather luxurious resort, the restaurant’s a long way away, I was up at 5.30am and don’t feel like dressing up to go there, I decided to order a chicken tikka pizza and a lemon cheesecake. Sound good or what?! And it arrived as well… 20 minutes later there’s a smartly dressed waiter at my door with a lovely meal under one of those metal things to keep them hot.


Look! Tarmac roads! With white lines!!! OK, in the UK, unlike Rwanda, you wouldn't have all the people walking by the side of the road carrying very heavy things in their head... We saw a couple of people carrying a huge basketful of carrots on their head - don't they know how heavy they are?!

Tis my first time visiting Uganda, it has the ‘African’ feel to it, but is obviously a lot more developed than Congo, or even Rwanda. You can see as you drive along that there are things like playgrounds, a lot more vehicles etc. (Note: added 12/7/10 – doesn’t mean it’s any safer though; you probably saw on the news about the explosions in the Rugby club/restaurant. Horrible. Don’t have particularly good associations with the World Cup – people were watching matches when the oil tanker exploded in Sange in DRC (a village our Tearfund team in Uvira have been working in) and also now in Uganda).



Lots of birds around. No idea what they are but they're pretty strange.

Thinking about being here made me wonder how many countries I’ve been to. I think I make it 26, which seems a lot, but then you remember there’s 195 countries in the world and suddenly it doesn’t seem that many.

Something that I managed to do which I’ve never done before was to ride in an aeroplane cockpit. I’ve got close on the UNHAS plane (mainly because the plane’s so small you’re almost in the cockpit) but not on a proper big plane. I was flying from Kigali to Entebbe, and as I was going to the toilet the door to the cockpit was open so I said hello to the pilot and exchanged a few words with him. Went to the loo, and as I came out he invited me to come and say hello to the other pilot. So I did, and then they told me to sit down, stick on a seatbelt and there I stayed until we arrived at Entebbe. The landing is so cool! During the flight itself, the pilots just have to sit and relax after they’ve set the plane on it’s course. Each air company has it’s own flight route, and then planes going in one direction are at odd altitudes (e.g. 17,000 ft) and planes going to the other way are at even altitudes (e.g. 18,000ft). For landing, they set a limit for the plane altitude, then dip the nose and we start heading down. After radio contact (which thankfully is a lot clearer signal than some of our VHF and HR radios are!) they confirm whether they’re going to do a visual landing or not. Apart from the last minute or two, they don’t even use the steering wheel/joystick things to steer – there’s a little knob that they set to change the angle. Things are quite calm and focussed, and it looks easier than I thought it might be to actually do the visual landing bit – the plane is under very precise control. Then they have their checklist for each of the different sections which they check off to make sure they’ve done everything they need to. I’d always thought that there would be one pilot ‘flying’ the plane, and the other sitting by, so they didn’t get confused. However, they worked together as a team, saying what they were doing and neither person was the ‘main’ pilot. I really enjoyed it, and was quite chuffed that I got to do it!



And the compulsory pictures of sunsets...