Friday 15th

This morning I was able to get in touch with Faith's brother John. Thank you to Faith, my family and Paul Kloppers for making it happen!

We arranged to meet with John that afternoon, so Mike and I had to amuse ourselves in Kampala until then. On Google we found a craft market close to the hotel, and I used my superb navigational skills to get us there.

I am so glad we went. Compared to Rwanda everything was half price or less. Before leaving the hotel I had written out a small currency guide for myself and Mike, and I had to keep checking it in disbelief. Everything was so cheap that I didn't bother to haggle. I stocked up on gifts and bought myself some beautiful wooden bowls for just a few quid. Mike took our stuff back up to the hotel and we went looking for lunch. Yeah, seven flights of stairs with heavy shopping bags, not a chance I was going up.

The area we were staying in didn't look like it would yield any good restaurants so we decided to head out further afield. We turned left on the basis that I thought that 'that way looks promising', and walked longer than we were expecting. Eventually we saw a sign that said restaurant at the top of an alleyway and decided that this was the place to stop. Why anyone would think that a restaurant located in a dirty alley way in the dodgy part of town would provide fine dining is beyond me. Perhaps we had just had too much sun. Maybe we were really hungry. It's possible that I’ve been trained to hope beyond all doubt and am too stubborn to admit that some things will never work out no matter how much you want or need them to. Anyway, it was a dive and after a drink we left to look for greener pastures.

Far in the distance I saw a brightly coloured orange banner that said 'Cafe Javas' and we headed towards it like moths to a flame. Now all that stood between us and lunch was the midday Kampala traffic. Oh my word you need bottle to cross the roads here. In the past few years, I have jumped off bridges, run off mountains and thrown myself from planes, but this was terrifying. Twenty minutes later we were still standing by the side off the road, palms sweating and knees a'quivering. In the end Mike's hunger won out, he grabbed my arm and we legged it across the road. I still can't believe we made it.

We arranged to meet John after lunch, so we sat outside the restaurant waiting for him to arrive. With no idea what he looked like or how old he was, we were hoping that, as the only two bazungu to be seen, we would be obvious to him. We were expecting a guy in a car to pick us up. That's all we had to go by.

So when this guys jumps off a boda boda and says hello to us, I say hello back, turn away, roll my eyes and continue my conversation with Mike. You have to understand that in Rwanda you draw a lot of attention. Sitting in one place for more than ten minutes will get you invites home, requests for money and several marriage proposals. And after a while you wish people would just let you go about your business without trying to be part of it.

“I’m John”, says the guy standing to my left, now looking a bit put out.

Is there any chance that his name is coincidental, that he is not Faith's brother John but just a random Ugandan John with a fetish for bazungu?

“Faith's brother”, he adds, as if to answer my question.

Brilliant.

John had some errands to run in town so he took us to a shopping centre and very generously gave us money for a drink. Living in East Africa has made realise how much I love shopping. Rwanda doesn't really have any shops, so on the rare occasion that I find myself in a proper shopping centre, I get a rush of adrenaline and a near uncontrollable urge to spend, spend, spend. Fortunately I’m having a bit of a cash flow problem at the moment, so I had to restrict my spending to some chutney Simba chippies and a £2 blanket for the bus ride to Mombasa. We went to a different Cafe Java's and I ordered a chocolate milkshake, which blissfully turned out

to be a glass full to the brim with chocolate ice cream, melted a bit in the sun.

John picked us at about seven and took us to the family home in Entebbe, where we met Faith's mum and other brother. Her mum cooked us a traditional Ugandan meal which was delicious and we spent the evening planning the rest of the weekends activities.

And they have puppies!