Entebbe

Wednesday 23rd May Kampala
We decided to go to Entebbe 40Km away to explore!! Maureen came with us in the Landy to try to find where the 1976 raid occurred. After getting security clearance, and paying our dues, we were taken all around the airport, showing us EVERYTHING, even stuff we would have regarded as being top security. We were taken to the “old airport’ where the Israeli rescue occurred. (Briefly: an Air France airliner was hijacked by Palestinian terrorists. The non-Israeli passengers were released and the Israelis held in the plane for ransom of release of Palestinian prisoners in Israel. The Israeli paratroopers, at 10pm, did a surprise rescue, shot all the military personnel at the airport base, shot up the tower, tied up all the airport personnel in the ‘new’ airport and rescued all the Israelis. All the Palestinians were shot, and the Israelis were out of there within 45 minutes. Idi Amin had been there, but had escaped just before the raid. Only an elderly Israeli lady, Dora Bloch, who was in hospital at the time was not rescued, and she disappeared without trace.) It so happened that the driver who was taking us around was one of those who had been tied up in the New Airport. The tower has not been used since, and still has bullet holes in the walls and broken windows. It is going to be turned into a museum.
We then went to a “zoo”, which they rather like to call an animal rescue centre, as none of the animals had been captured from the wild. There we saw the ‘rare and illusive Shoebill stork’. In fact three of them and took millions of photos. We had an overall enjoyable day.
The road and lakeshore from Kampala to Entebbe is continuous houses and shops. It is very developed and has up-market houses and higher middle class houses, more than we have seen anywhere in Africa outside SA as yet. We feel that development is way ahead of the other countries we have been through so far. The other countries do have smart suburbs, but not nearly like Uganda. The city itself is neater, cleaner and even the markets are more orderly and smart. We leave tomorrow for Murchison Falls in the North-west of Uganda.
Uganda has recently increased its milk production from 30,000 l/day to 75,000l/day. They have secured a market of 50tonnes of honey to the EU, but have no honey to sell!! We have been at this house for 5 days now and they have had only 1hour’s water supply in the last 3 days, and have had to buy a tanker of water to fill their reservoir. The electricity has been off every day for at least 12hours per day. They have a huge generator which takes over at these times.



Tuesday 22nd May 2007 Kampala
We have read three newspapers here in Kampala and the only thing mensioned bout SA is that Thabo Mbeki doesn’t believe HIV results in AIDS, and Jacob Zuma believes taking a shower protects you from contracting HIV.
We tried for Ethiopian visa, and told it to collect tomorrow afternoon, so we are stuck in Kampala with itchy feet for another day. Maureen was looking like death so I went to the “International Hospital” with her to see a doctor. Six hours waiting later it turned out she needed more Eltroxin – thank goodness it was only that!! Nev went to shop with the men and went to the butcher with a sign “The only European shopping center in Kampala”, where they bought fillet steak @ R45/Kg, some chickens and some fish.