Saturday 25th October

We awoke to a 6.15am breakfast of omelettes before setting off to Jinja. The road was slow and we arrived at the source of the Nile at 10am to be shown a monument that was erected after the commonwealth leaders meeting there in 2007 at which our Queen was present. We went on a boat ride down the Nile to the source which is marked with a big blue signpost and many photos were taken. The source of The Nile is located on the northern edge of Lake Victoria where water bubbles up through the rock. We also journeyed into the Lake a small way and saw the sheer magnitude of this body of water.

After journeying down the Nile we made our way to The Amani Babies Home. This was set up 11 years ago and was in rented premises until 2 years ago when they raised sufficient funds to purchase their own land and build a purpose built babies home. They currently have 42 babies but can accommodate up to 60. They have around 30 ‘mumma’s’, 6 short term volunteers from outside of Uganda and the Director and some of her family. We were shown around by Emily, the assistant director, and saw the 4 cottages where the children live with their mumma’s and the babies room. She was also able to answer our questions about the home.

Amani seeks to reunite the babies with their parents or other family members; or have them adopted by families in Uganda or other parts of the world; or, as a last resort, transfer them to a children’s orphanage. They also do a large amount of outreach work in their community working with families and other children. Paul, our Watoto guide, was very complimentary about Amani and explained how Watoto, seek to work with and build up other ministries doing similar things to them.

Lunch saw us take a trip to the Nile Resort where some of the group swam and all of us had lunch over looking The Nile River as it makes it way through Uganda, South Sudan, Sudan and Egypt into the Mediterranean sea, our guide on the river said it takes 3 months for water to travel the whole distance from source to mouth.

The journey back was long and rough with the major road works on the Jinja road having an adverse effect on our travelling. We arrived back after a 3hr journey through the Kampala traffic to chicken and rice for dinner.

After a brief diary feedback session the group have now gone to pack before we travel to Gulu tomorrow morning. The bus picks us up at 6.30am so with a breakfast call for 5.45am this is me signing off!

We are in Gulu for 2 nights before heading to Murchison Falls Safari Park for 2 days and coming back to Kampala on Thursday. The north of Uganda is a lot more primitive so we may not have internet access to update this blog- keep checking back but don’t worry if we don’t update now until Thursday!