Adventures in East Africa (Part Three) Kigali to Bujumbura and back again.....

border crossing between Rwanda
and Burundi

After finishing off our work with Every Life in Kampala we said goodbyes to Emma, Anna, Tim and Jonathan, as well as Drea and Teagan who'd all hosted us so well and also John and the wider Every Life team, we met up with our friend Richard, a local Ugandan who had been our guide when we visited the mountain gorillas in the Bwindi Impenetrable forest in April, who was now going to drive us the near on 500 miles from Kampala to the Burundi capital, Bujumbura.

This was only our third visit to Uganda but we had already learnt that leaving the crazy Kampala traffic is always a good feeling and as we headed south west the road opened up, big skies welcoming us as we ventured over the equator and on towards the Rwandan border.

The border crossing between Uganda and Rwanda was relatively easy and we were soon motoring on the right hand side of the road through vast tea plantations that fill the wide and luscious valleys set between the rolling hills that had witnessed so much tribulation in this tiny african nation just over 20 years before, read more on Tim's thoughts around that by clicking here.

Travelling in Africa is always a hair
raising experience, especially in a Tuk Tuk

We spent a cool night in the Rwandan capital Kigali, over 500 meters higher than Kampala, it would seem that there has been loads of international investment made into what was one of the poorest nations in the world and our first impressions was of a european city set in the middle of Africa, wide boulevards, working street lights and even traffic lights which were obeyed by drivers who respected the laws of the road. 

Tim training in Bujumbura

The following morning we continued south through some stunning countryside, again rolling hills with tiny hilltop communities, everyone busy with their daily chores. Although the roads in Rwanda are fantastic compared to those we have experienced in Madagascar they wind up and down the hillsides, where convoys of lorries can hamper the speed of the journey, however we never saw any litter and were overwhelmed with the beauty with valleys of rice and hills covered with tea, coffee and banana. 

Sights along the road

We crossed the border near Butare and then travelled onward into Burundi however had a bit of an issue at the border as our driver's girlfriend had forgotten her passport, not quite as dumb as it sounds as there is an east African agreement between Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Rwanda where one can move freely with a credit card style ID card, Burundi isn't part of that agreement which meant we had to leave her at the border on the Rwandan side as we continued onwards towards Bujumbura.

Leaving her wasn't ideal and before we had gone too far we had agreed for our driver, who had been paid to take us on the whole journey, to drop us in the next town for us to catch a taxi and for him to return to the crossing to ensure the safety of his girlfriend, which was the right thing to do given the issues she reported to have had with the money changers and other hangers on who frequent those border towns!

Maz training in Ngozi

Our transition between leaving our Richard, our driver, and percuring a taxi wasn't without incident but at least we were heading down, on less impressive but still passable roads, from the high mountains and down to the capital which sits on the northern banks of lake Tanganyika. Once again finding Simon and our agreed site for our rendezvou wasn't without its problems as the taxi driver had never been to Bujumbura and had no idea where he 
was going. 

All that said (and not said!) we were glad to arrive just after the sun went down and with further reflection on our time in Burundi we wouldn't have been in too much trouble as we found out that people were so helpful and friendly and the city certainly didn't have the edginess of South Africa! People roam the streets and line the roads in their colourful african dress and always have a smile or a friendly wave.

Tim training this time in Ngozi

Once we'd hooked up with Simon and Lizzie they took us to their home where we were going to be spending the next couple of weeks. They are amazing hosts, we enjoyed great food, very healthy, and time with their wonderful children. 

Simon is a great networker, having lived and worked in Burundi for over 20 years and with his young family too, he connected us with some of his contacts within the Great Lakes Outreach charity, including Acher, a trained pastor and university lecturer, who would be our translator as we shared the Emerging Leaders Leadership for Life programme to two sets of pastors and local leaders in both Bujumbura and the northern city of Ngozi.

leaders we trained in Bujumbura

Our two sets of training would be spread over a total of eight days with two days travelling between the two sites in between, it was full on with each of our planned three hour modules taking around five to six hours to deliver. The main reason for the extra time was to ensure that those who were receiving the leadership principles had full understood the concepts and also had time to feedback on how they had applied them to their own lives. 

It's always a highlight to hear how, after a few hours, people start to apply new mindsets to real life situations that they find themselves in, be that within their own lives, such as 'time keeping' or in how they treat their family, understanding that leadership starts with ourselves and that a leader, and we are all leaders in some form or another, exists for the benefit of others.

Walking home in Ngozi

Simon and or Acher made sure we were at our venues on time in the mornings but it was great to feel free enough to catch our common Malagasy transport home each day whilst in Bujumbura, that being our beloved Tuk Tuk which speed around the streets, allowing us to experience the daily sights, sounds and smells that make up life for some of the more fortunate Burundians who live in the city.

Leaders we trained in Ngozi

On the rare moments where we weren't training we enjoyed some time at a local hotel, with good wifi and a small pool, and we also met up and celebrated 'Thanksgiving' with some other expats who made us feel very welcome in their home up in the foothills of the mountains above Bujumbura, with stunning views across the lake to the DR Congo and a lovely and much needed cooling breeze!

Kigali skyline from the genocide memorial

Both of us were able to venture out to run around the sand roads near Simon's home, where we felt very comfortable and safe, even with the high presence of police and army who patrol the streets.

The training was very well received and we are already speaking with Acher about the opportunity to return to complete some follow up work and training of those we shared the programme with to become trainers themselves in 2018 and we are confident that the 140 people, both men and women, young people and elders too, will be using the Leadership for Life training to see transformation come to their communities, starting with themselves.

Sunrise over Lake Bunyonyi 

All too soon it was time to leave and seeing as though we'd finished our training in the northern town of Ngozi we decided spend some extra time in Rwanda visiting the genocide memorial in Kigali, once again click here for post around that, and a few nights in the mountains near Lake Bunyonyi and then Lake Victoria in Uganda, these few days gave us time to reflect on all that we'd seen and experienced over those crazy weeks before returning to England to enjoy Christmas at home with our family.

Sunrise over lake Victoria

It's been an exciting 2017 but for now we'll signing off and wish you a very happy New Year, we promise to provide further updates in 2018 from our next adventure back to South Africa which begins in early January!

Adventures in East Africa (Part Two) - Friendly Uganada

We've been home for a few days since touching down to some colder English winter weather, spending the first few days in Bristol in our caravan, which was a tad cold but the warm welcome we received from Chris and Claire and our wonderful Grandchildren made it worth bearing the chilly nights. We are now in Aylesbury catching up with some friends and family prior to our Christmas celebrations with Tim's parents, Sister, Brother-in-Law and niece in Northampton which we are really looking forward to.

As promised on our last blog post we are pleased to provide a further update on our recent travels to Eastern/Central Africa and this second post picks up on the work we were doing in Uganda with the charity 'Every Life' (EL).

Life up your head!

This was our third visit to Uganda and other than the challenges around entering and exiting any African nation via an overnight flight we had a great time, the people are so friendly, other than when they get behind the wheel or handlebars of a motorised vehicle, and it was with excitement that we looked forward to teaching the Emerging Leaders 'Leadership for Life' (LfL) programme to the staff of EL who we'd shared the programme with earlier on in April this year.

Our good friend and ex-Village of Hope volunteer, Emma Podmore, welcomed us from Entebbe airport, and after a near on two hour journey across Kampala we arrived in Bweyogerere and our hosts, Tim and Anna's, home, who are in fact next-door neighbours to Emma and Drea, and have a beautiful son called Jonathan, who happens to be bestfriends with Drea's daughter Teagan.

Andrew and Olivia running the refresher
at the Hope Center

After a weekend settling in and planning for the next few days, we awoke to sunshine on the Monday morning and joined the 25 staff from the EL team who we would be training to become trainers of the LfL programme. These amazing people were to be taking the whole week off of their daily duties and came from every department, from finance, HR and other office staff, to those working on the ground in the slums where they run social and health related outreach day in day out.


These days were full on, and unfortunately the weather didn't hold and were interrupted by the seasonal rain, which lashed down so hard at time we had to abandon the tent which had been installed on the project managers site, and by our food and drink breaks. 

training inside a container

These times were a highlight of the day as we shared wonderful meals together, local Ugandan food including Matoke, Groundnut (G-nut) sauce, Mandazi, Chapati, and or Pork or fish.


We worked through the four modules of the programme, Lead Yourself, Lead Your Team, Lead Your Finances and Lead a Project, with us demonstrating the activities, stories or actions and then giving time for each group or couple to read through the manuals and then deliver the sections back to us all for feedback and critiquing. 


The staff worked so hard and by the end of the week we were truly confident that each and everyone of them was in a position to lead a LfL programme themselves, working in couples, as we do, to share this with those that they work with in the slums around Kampala as well as within their own lives, teams and daily life of the EL organisation.

Tim's running partner 

Tim managed to get out for a run on a couple of occasions, joined by the onsite security guard who guided him around the tightly packed homes on the red soiled side roads that surrounded Anna and Tim's home. This proved to be a challenge as his times weren't as quick as when in England, however after looking at the data it was hardly surprising as Kampala sits at over 4,300ft above sea level, but to be able to run at ease through some very poor and needy areas was an eye opener into the daily struggles that people have to go through to get clean water or keep their belongings clean.

African drummers

We were able to attend an amazing evening of local East African drumming and dancing, with incredibly supple young people performed dances from Kenya, various regions of Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi. The biggest drums were saved till last and other than the pogo dancing men from Kenya those drums from Burundi were to be the highlight of the evening.

Team building day at the Family Center

During our second full week we helped Emma run a 'team building' day at the EL 'Family Center' which is situated above the stunning tea plantations on the Jinga Road to the east of Kampala. The day was very successful and we encouraged the staff to use their leadership skills to work together at the various activities, including a 'capture the flag' wide game, plank walking and egg and spoon obstacle race where teams won points for good teamwork as well as winning the events!

murchison falls 

We also ran a 'refresher' day, inviting around 30 of the Every Life 'Community Champions' who had attending our LfL earlier on in the year. This was an opportunity for a couple of the EL team to share what they had learnt on the Train the Trainer week with these people, for us to see them in action and for us to hear the stories of the people who had put the leadership principles into their own lives since we were with them earlier on in the year.

These stories always encourage us, be they large or small, and they give us confidence that what we are sharing is making a real difference in peoples lives and we will share some of these on a later blog post to encourage you all too.

It wasn't all work work work, we did have weekends off and we took the opportunity of being in one of the leading nations for wildlife viewing as we made our way north to Murchison Falls National Park where we not only spent an evening at the falls, which are some of the most powerful in the world, but took a trip up the river Nile to see the falls from below, however the highlight of the trip was our self drive safari in Emma's little Toyota Rav4.

lone girrafe trying to get some time
on it's own

We took the small car ferry, big enough for eight lightweight vehicles, (or two cars, a huge lorry and a JCB digger which made the short trip across the Nile with us)! There were also many many footpassageners who joined us to the northern banks where we enjoyed a day driving along some very sandy tracks, through vast savannah where we spotted huge groups of giraffe (we think around 200), down to the banks of lake Albert where we saw a number of Hippo wandering around out of the water during the day, which is quite unusual, and herds of elephants which ambled across the tight tracks in front of our vehicle.


All in all we had a wonderful time and feel that our investment into the Every Life team will pay off as they then share the LfL programme into the communities that they work with in 2018 and we hope to be back one day to hear of the stories that will come out of their interventions.

our overloaded car ferry!

Thats it from Uganda for now, our next post will include our overland trip from Kampala through Rwanda to Bujumbura in Burundi and the work we did there with Simon and his connections via the Great Lakes Outreach (GLO).

Maz, Emma and Tim at the falls

We wish you all a very merry Christmas, wherever you are in the world and will hopefully update this blog with a further post before the New Year and before we fly to South Africa on the 7th January!

Adventures in East Africa (Part One) - Thoughts from a visit to a memorial site.

Firstly we are so sorry that we haven't updated our blog since the end of October, once again life has been extremely busy and we have been on some amazing adventures through East Africa visiting and sharing the Emerging Leaders leadership training with Emma Podmore and the team of Everylife in Kampala, as well as with our great friend Simon Guillebaud in Burundi and his connections via Great Lakes Outreach, but we will save stories of those exciting times for a later post!

Before then there is something that I need to get down on paper/in electronic form, if not just for myself and my well being, so we'll start from the end of what has been an incredible six week trip and then work backwards in later posts OK?.

This post was birthed out of some of the experiences I've have had and I will be writing for myself rather than the royal 'we' of 'Tim and Maz' fame, as I am seeking to put into words the thoughts and feelings I'm having after visiting the Genocide Memorial site in Kigali which has been created to help remind us of the awful atrocious that were conducted in Rwanda in just 100 days in the spring and early summer of 1994.

I had never really had an urge to visit any of the genocide memorial sites, but seeing as though we were travelling overland through Rwanda from Uganda to Burundi one can't really drive through any larger town without seeing them along the side of the road, so when we returned to Kampala via Kigali from Bujumbura I felt it would it would be remiss of me to pass by without paying some respect. 

It seems kind of strange that during the 1980s and 1990s we had so many occurrences of man killing man because of his race or religion, Cambodia and its 'killing fields', the ethnic cleansing that took place in the former Yugoslavia and the around 800,000 to one million Tutsis who were killed by their Hutu neighbours in Rwanda. 

I'm no great historian but I have read enough to firstly understand that no one is ever fully to blame and or either blameless in any disagreement between men. However as I am from Northern Europe it would be unwise of me to ignore the part in which my recent ancestors, be they German or Belgium in the case of Rwanda or my fellow Englishmen as the British in the nations that made up a vast Commonwealth from Canada to New Zealand and many nations in between, had in many of the problems in the world, especially in Africa, which were brought on by those European powers when they carved up Africa into newly formed nations with little or no regard to the complex makeup of tribe, culture or tongue which existed way before any white man set foot upon darkest continent of Africa. 

That said I have read three most helpful books around the genocide in Rwanda, the powerful report style of the BBC correspondent Fergal Keane in his book 'Season of Blood', the more journeying thoughts of our good friend Trevor Waldock in 'A Rwandan Journey' or the thought provoking book titled 'An Ordinary Man' which was written by the man who's story was told in the film 'Hotel Rwanda', Paul Rusesabagina, a story of the real life events behind the manager of the Hotel Milles Collines in Kigali where he helped to save near on 2,000 people's lives by hiding them in his hotel for 76 days when outside people were being killed for their ethnic background.

In my mind the underlying issues of any of the genocides, which have and or will take place, are based on the differences that divide men, rather than the commonalities that must and can be celebrated between men, creating a faceless 'other' to become the scapegoat of our own insecurities. 

In the case of Rwanda there had been issues between the ruling Tutsis, placed in power by the Germans and Belgians prior to Rwanda's independence in 1962, and their fellow countrymen the majority Hutus, however what took place in 1994 was unprecedented and saw neighbours turn upon neighbour, literally cutting ties of friendship with the blade of a machete and finished off with a bullet of a gun. 

For 100 days this violence continued until the current president Paul Kagame returned with his revolutionary army, established in exile in Uganda, to claim power back for the minority Tutsis. The stories that were so graphical portrayed at the genocide memorial included some harrowing stories where churches which were perceived to be places of peace and a haven for those escaping the carnage outside were turned into buildings where huge numbers of people were butchered by those who had once shared the good news of Jesus, to love one another, even your enemies and those who persecute you.

What followed in the later summer of 1994 is still ongoing as refugees, mainly Hutus escaping the retribution of those they had killed, seek shelter in UN supported camps in Tanzania and the DRC. Today as we sit in a somewhat peaceful Uganda we are hearing news of continued violence in those camps, mainly between differing people groups which is largely unreported by the western press. 

The same issues and high numbers of people were killed over a ten year period at about the same time in neighbouring Burundi, where we have just returned from, and little if nothing was really reported around that either.

So it was with all this in mind that last Sunday morning I made my way into the memorial site in Kigali and from that experience, of seeing the mass graves of over 250,000 innocent people, wandering around the respectfully created gardens which highlight the differences and celebrate the uniqueness of each and every person both living and dead, I am now grappling with my many new thoughts. 

My mind is now haunted by the faces and stories of real people, men, women and especially children who suffered for the very fact that they were different to those who felt that they needed to be removed from the society which they once shared and one that still continues to share one language. Husbands turned on wives, even mothers stood by as their own children were taken and the world also turned its back. 

The news stories from Africa during the initial weeks of this genocide, where something could surely have been done, were focused on the momentous events that were taking place a little further south as the first free and fair elections were taking place in South Africa and where the much celebrated Nelson Mandela was sworn in as president of another divided nation, and what has really changed there? Will we see tribe come against tribe in that nation as the balance of power still shifts even 20 years on? but I digress.

The United Nations stood by watching, refusing to help when it was within their power to do so, but even in to that end they would have surely have had to 'take sides', and who's to take? Which leads me to my thoughts and how I must surely start with myself and my own choices of whom to love and whom to hate? Is it as hard and harsh as that I hear you cry! 

I'm aware that the winners often get to tell the story with the losers silent on how they saw the events. Our news broadcasters are the same, favouring one side without fully reporting the whole story. I'm a fan of John Pilger who from my view is an example of providing balanced journalism, I only wish he was a little more read. 

Maz actually caught my feelings so well as I read this back to her around the fact that we are feed a way to think without fully understanding the politics and bigger world system behind it all, surely real journalism is to report the facts as seen without putting a political bent on them but there again I digress. 

It is said that 'if you aren't part of the solution then you are part of the problem'. We make daily choices which end up meaning that some will win and some will lose? Experiments have been carried out to see how far your every day man will go once pushed or encouraged to inflict the electric shock treatment on his fellow man. We all sort of follow the crowd and maybe that's what I believe happened in Germany around the concentration camps, the killing fields of Cambodia or the genocide that took place in the neighboring nation to where I currently sit?

But I suppose my question is to myself, what shall/what will I do? love those Muslims that seem hell bent on blowing my culture and fellow northern European to bits, or to love Mr. Trump and his crazy decisions and rhetoric which are perhaps creating such extreme thoughts, feelings and actions from those others? What is the real issue behind these actions?

We live in a culture of winners and losers, our capitalistic minds have been shaped since our birth. The winners get the medals, the accolades and the money, the losers are left at the bottom of the pile to fend for themselves. At school we were graded both within academia, the arts and sports, who ever thought it was a good idea to award every child with the same prize even if they finished first or last? I must say that I didn't, but perhaps that wasn't as crazy an idea as it first looked. 

So as I sit here by the banks of Lake Victoria with the sun shining down on me, a belly full and a bank account which will at least enable me to return home via a plane to England, surely I am called to live in peace with those around me, those who I see as the same, family, gender, ethnic background, language, and even those who are perhaps more challenging to get along with, the 'other'.

I'm reminded of the story of the 'good samaritan' and the challenge that Jesus gave when telling us that the whole of the prophets and the law could be summed up in this easy to read but hard to live phase, 'Love your God with all your heart and love your neighbour as you love yourself'. 

What is the story that I want to be writing in my life, what's the legacy that I want to be remembered for, a man who was able to love those around me or not? 

What if I don't love them, I somewhat reluctantly conclude that maybe a genocide of sorts is already happening in my own heart!