6 modes of transport, 72 hours, and lots of dust.

It's Friday night and I'm sat on my bed in the hostel at which we're staying in Fort Portal. I've been in uganda for 2 days; I still haven't managed to access the internet. I'll upload this to my blog when I do. The journey here was very long and tiring: a coach from Manchester to Birmingham, Birmingham to Tile Hill and back to pick up some rock climbing equipment, Birmingham to Amsterdam by plane, where we spent the night, then Amsterdam to Kigali by plane, followed by Kigali to Entebbe, Uganda. The private hire picked us up from Entebbe at around 11PM, and we arrived at Backpackers' in Kampala around an hour later to find it without electricity or enough water to flush the Western-style toilets. At this stage, my spirits were low. The night was uncomfortably warm, but I slept fairly well through exhaustion.
The morning sun showed me what the dark had hidden; lush vegitation and beautiful scenery. My spirits were lifted, and my first encounter with a "Keyhole" toilet went well; it's surprisingly natural, and it became clear why Western-style toilets are seen as strange elsewhere in the world. Breakfast took a typically African long time to arrive. We left our bags in storage at Backpackers' and got a taxi into the centre of Kampala, to see the man in charge of GIZ about obtaining a permit for the Mabwe hydro scheme. Kampala itself is chaos - dusty, dirty and packed with human beings selling anything they can. The heavy traffic saw us abandon the taxi and walk to Amber House, where GIZ are located. We were stared at constantly, as even in the capital city centre, 'Muzungu' are rare. The new head of GIZ was welcoming and efficient, and happened to be coming to Fort Portal in a few days, where we could meet him and collect our permit.
Traffic wasted even more time in returning to the hostel, and the journey back to the centre became a race to catch a coach across the country to Fort Portal. Stationary traffic again caused us to abandon the taxi and walk, but this time we were all carrying very large bags. The area around the coach station was particularly busy and dirty, and the atmosphere was not good, making us glad to reach the station. On arriving, the coach was already full, but those in charge decided they could fit both us and our huge baggage onto it. 10 minutes of struggling later, the coach left the station. We all got interesting people to sit next to: Jack was paired with a large lady with little concept of personal space, Dan attempted to educate two young Ugandan men, before pulling out his Ukulele, Becca was proposed to by a compulsive liar, who offered a dowry of a mobile phone, and I conversed brokenly with a combined Civil Engineer and Christian minister; the conversation swung between how he could get work in the U.K., and attempts to convert me, including his belief that God had sent me (a self-confessed Athiest) to Uganda to meet him. The journey was 5 hours long.
On arrival in Fort Portal, it was dark but immediately clear that this was a cleaner, more relaxed city. We hired a car to take us to the Y.E.S. hostel, finally meeting the 20 coursemates joining us for the Field Course. We ate what was left of dinner, and headed out with everyone else to the Mountains of the Moon hotel, which happens to have a very comfortable bar and garden. 500ml of Nile beer, a very drinkable lager, cost 3000 shillings; around 75p in British money. Being exhausted from our 3 day journey, we soon returned to the Hostel to sleep.
Having arrived at the Field course 3 days late, we were left with 2 days to complete the first portion, a survey of a river site. We had also been given the task of investigation a 20km-long escarpment, in contrast to the other groups' well defined sites. We had gained a teammate by this point, Ray, as his bags had been temporarily lost in Cairo, delaying his journey. This meant that 5 students, a driver and a local guide all piled into the 5-seater Toyota Hilux. Ray and I jumped into the back, at first enjoying the lack of a rear window, bouncing along dirt tracks, waving to rural folk shocked to see Muzungu. However, the car was kicking up a huge dust cloud, and we were soon covered; pictures to follow. We closed the window and continued attempting to find our way to the escarpment using a combination of 1968 maps and my laptop GPS (without an internet connection for maps). This did not go well, and after many hot, bumpy hours and circles, when we thought we were finally close, a local informed us that most of the roads marked on the map leading to the escarpment no longer exist.
We eventually came to a village at which we were directed to talk to the LC1, a man in charge of around a 10 person settlement. He took us to a very small and useless river, before getting in our car to take us to one he promised was much larger. In the car, he explained that he had built his big house using his profits from growing a local chewable narcotic - before showing us his fields on arrival. Although technically illegal, the local police do not enforce any laws unless there is profit in it for them. The new river site was fast-flowing, but with only around 5m head (drop). On climbing out over a branch to investigate the depth of a pool, I met my first colony of biting ants. The locals informed us that there were 2 trading centres within a kilometre, and that they had small solar panels that were only useful in summer. This potential use coupled with prior knowledge of electrcity conservation made the community viable hydro-power users. We decided to return tomorrow with a supervisor, to carry out flow measurements and mapping of the river.