Two eventful days. Tuesday night, we received two tables we had ordered before. My custom-made desk is solid two-inch wood all over, and heavy wood (mugavu) at that. It took five guys to carry it inside and a total of well over an hour of work, since we had to remove two doors (no, you can’t just lift them off – you have to unscrew the hinges) to inch the desk in through the doorways. Of course, the power went off just then, and everything had to be done in candlelight. The sense of accomplishment was tangible when the massive desk was finally standing in its rightful place. It’s tall, it’s handsome and smooth, it’ll carry anything. I know lots of people, mostly women, who would appreciate this kind of… desk.

Later on, over dinner, I heard of a chance to go on a little safari trip to Lake Mburo the following morning. Feeling rather stuck in Kampala by now, I took the bait with little hesitation. So five of us, plus Philip the driver, set out in a canvas-roofed Land Rover almost my age. I crossed the Equator for the first time and, when we got to the national park, saw lots of zebras, impalas, wart hogs, monkeys, eagles, buffaloes, and waterbucks, as well as a lone hyena. After dark, we came across a big hippo while driving to the park restaurant. It performed a full-scale yawn in the headlights before disappearing into the bushes. We slept in a little banda surrounded by animal sounds. The plan was to go on a boat ride in the morning to check out some more hippos and crocodiles, but a tardy group of mzungu tourists screwed up the timetable and we had to leave because three of us continued to the Ssese Islands. The journey back included a three-hour wait in Masaka while Philip was taking the Ssese group to a Lake Victoria port located 35 km to the south. That gives an idea of the condition of some roads.

While I was admiring the wild, Kaija had her own, much wilder, adventure on a WFP staff retreat in Jinja. The hotel, a quality establishment on the first mile of the Nile, burned down. As far as I know, nobody was injured, but it’s all over the front pages today. Kaija tells me people decided to leave the building when the ceiling started going snap-crackle-pop. It seems the fire begun in the wing that houses (surprise, surprise) the hotel sauna. The retreat (does that word not imply that you leave this kind of action behind?), however, goes on until tomorrow.

15:48