Uganda

20th February

After an early start Richard and I arrived at Heathrow, and found Barbara, our team leader, at the Cafe Nero, as promised. Gradually the rest of the team arrived from as far away as Scotland, and it was time to board our plane and start our adventure.

Nine hours on an aeroplane seems a very long time, but we arrived in Uganda on schedule at 11.00 pm local time. We bought our visas, which proved to be fairly straight forward, and went to collect all our baggage, which included two portable dental chairs. We got through customs with any problems, and were met by Stevie, our bus driver for the week. We arrived at the Mildmay Hospital about 1.00 am, and we're allocated our rooms, which were I fact small self contained chalets, basic but clean. Into bed, under a mosquito net, and asleep.

21st February

Woken at 7.30 by the alarm, it only seems five minutes since I put my head down. We all met for breakfast, sausage sand which and tea at 8.00. After breakfast we boarded the coach to visit the children's home run by Natalie of the charity Food Steps. She rescues very young and sick children from the Government run Young Persons Prison where we will be running a clinic tomorrow. She also stores all the Dentaid equipment, so we spent the morning unpacking all the supplies which we bought with us, and topping up the boxes ready for the clinic visits scheduled for the group over the next two weeks. This was then all packed into the bus, where we are all going to sit I'm not sure. They kindly provided us with lunch, a local maize dish (similar to polenta) and a bean stew. Basic, but that's what the kids eat on a day to day basis.

After lunch we stopped off at a local shopping mall to refresh ourselves with a coffee, and to visit the bank to get some Ugandan Shillings, just under 4000 to the pound! Mind you prices are pretty cheap for us, 3000 shillings for a coffee, and petrol is about 3200/ litre.

The main road from the airport at Entebbe to the capital Kampala is very busy; cars, trucks and minibuses of all sizes and conditions, and of courses motor bikes. The street is lined with small makeshift shacks, from each of which there seems to be a business run, shops selling everything from local produce to clothes and toys. When we were travelling from the airport last night at 1.00 in the morning I even saw someone having a hair cut. The noise, heat and dust has to be seen to be believed, it really does assault the senses. 

We have a couple of hours to rest this afternoon, before heading out for an early supper. early to bed for a good nights sleep before an early start and busy day tomorrow. We have been warned that there will be some fairly harrowing sights in the prison, and we are due to see around 100 patients between us. We expect to have us four English dentists, and three Ugandan dentists, and we'll work in pairs. There are two sorts of dentists in Uganda; those who study a 3 year course and are trained for extractions and simple fillings, and those with a five year BDS.