Kampala

I’ve posted lots of photos of animals, camping and my friends but none of what we spend most of our days looking at from the truck windows – the villages and cities of East Africa. Right now we’re in Uganda and it’s wonderfully green here. After the dry dust of Tanzania and parts of Kenya, this is a welcome change. There are banana trees, sugar cane, tea plantations, and all kinds of crops I don’t recognise. The houses are pretty similar everywhere though. Mostly made from mud and sticks, corrugated iron, shipping containers, cement and bricks and surrounded by the ubiquitous piles of rubbish, although Uganda doesn’t seem quite a bad as other places we’ve been.

Kampala

The dirt roads or roadsides mean that everything is coated in ochre dust, although the bright colours of the shops and their hand painted advertising. In Kenya everything was Coca Cola red, in Uganda it’s all Pepsi blue.

I thought people might be interested in seeing the inside of our trusty truck. It’s fairly roomy and in the middle of the back half there’s two tables so people can play card games or work on computers. The front has its own cabin but there is a space through which we can see the driver and hear him singing (if it is Steve) or watch him dancing (if it is David). Happily (for me) it’s hard to see the oncoming traffic so I don’t worry about what’s coming – we just feel the truck braking hard and hold onto all our gear to stop it flying everywhere then listen to Steve swearing at other drivers – or cows, or pedestrians or roadworks.

The front of the truck.

The back of the truck.