I spent last Saturday evening sitting on the balcony of the Aero Club in Entebbe, watching the setting sun gradually change the colors in the sky. It's a fabulous place to spend a few hours watching the planes coming in to land at the International Airport, flying over Lake Victoria. Jenn was excited to go sit with the other ex-pats here, since the lovely scenery seems to brighten everyones mood - a rare social outing where no one was negative or complaining about something or other. It seems that the typical conversation always comes around to some negative comment about the people, the food, or the traffic - it's easy to get frustrated with the way things work (or don't work). But an evening at the Aero Club tends to wash all those complaints away, if only for a few hours.



I'm now at the end of week two of this three month trip, and the majority of the last week we've been at Entebbe. The house here is very comfortable, and well protected by the four vicious dogs in the photo! They're actually quite sweet but would certainly not hesitate to bite an unfamiliar intruder to the compound. They can certainly make quite a mess of their food, which is a home-cooked mixture of small dried fish and pasho, a ground maize powder that is cooked like rice to make a thick paste. The dried fish boiling on the stove certainly add a unique aroma to the house...



While daily life around Entebbe is quite tranquil and relaxed, other parts of Uganda have been considerably more volatile lately. There have been protests and demonstrations taking place over the last few weeks, mostly centered in the capital city of Kampala. The government opposition leader has been heading up a series of 'Walk to Work' demonstrations, ostensibly to protest rising fuel and food prices. The inflation rate has been steadily climbing, and is currently around 14%. It's certainly made life difficult for a lot of people, but prices are rising everywhere in the world, not just here in Uganda. Anyway, the opposition leader has been arrested several times now for causing trouble, but the police response has been quite heavy-handed and people have responded by protesting even more. Yesterday most of Kampala ground to a halt as some people erected barricades on the roads with burning tyres and branches. There were multiple security forces dispersing the crowds with teargas, guns and rubber bullets... anyway, all this is information I picked up from news reports, as Entebbe was business as usual. I spent Friday afternoon sitting in a garden cafe working on the computer and listening to the Royal Wedding in the background. Uganda is a Commonwealth nation, and there's a lot of interest in the big ceremony.



It's certainly a lovely place to work, with lots of interesting flowers and lush plantlife around. I've been going through a crash-course in small project management, doing my best to fill in the gaps and help Jenn and Jonny keep the mine project moving forward. There's a lot of pieces to consider, and like most everything in Africa progress happens 'slowly slowly', polepole. It looks like there's still a lot of administration and paperwork to get finished here in Entebbe, so I'll be here for a little while yet. One of the next big challenges is getting some sort of solar power set up at the mine camp, so that we'll be able to run computers and basic equipment there and continue to work. Luckily there are several options readily available in Kampala, and it seems like a solar electricity system will be fairly straightforward to setup. Lots to learn, lots to do, and of course lots of fun to be had!