If there was a film of all that has happened over the last few weeks, no one would believe it!

After an eventful 17hr hourney from Kenya to Kampala, Uganda, I finally arrived chez-Max's and was totally over excited by the running water, electricity, flushing toilet and milk that you didn't have to personally milk a cow for! - Things I hadn't seen for a long time!

Max, Triny, Jps and I then left Kampala and began the most unforgetable road trip of our life times!  We headed to the War Zone in the North of Uganda - Gulu.  We visited a few IDP (Internal Displacement) Camps where 22,000 people lived, having been forced their by the government because their villages had become too dangerous for them to stay in due to the attacks from the LRA (Lord's Resistance Army).  However, them being in the camps doesn't stop the attacks and we heard the most awful stories of how the LRA would come in the night, force the children to bite their parents to dath, so that they had no one to return to and then take the children to be in their army.

It was so humbling being there and playing with all the children.  There is only about a foot or two between each mud hut and you come across little mounds of earth every now and agian which are graves of babies, because there is no where else to put them. 

The average age in the camp is 16, this is quite worrying as the families have been in the camps for 20 years, so those in the camps now have never had to work and so don't knoiw any of the basic life skills needed to live and support oneselves in Africa.  Once there is peace, how are they going to work or farm for themselves once the food supplies stop coming - so they need to be trained.  Max wnts to set up and orpahnage and area in the North where the orphans are looked after and the adlutls trained and jobs provided so that the area can become self-sufficient again.

We visited a night shelter for the children called Noah's Ark.  This is a place where the children in their thousands walk for miles to come to, just to sleep somewhere safely for a night as their villages and even the camps are not safe from the LRA attacks, when they steal the children.  Being there just drew out so many mixed emotions, the place was more like a concentration camp, all it was was a huge smelly hall and big tents that the children slept on the ground, but at least there was a fence protecting them from the outside world.

We then headed to the Archbishop's place, near Congo, where we stayed the night.  Getting there was quite a feat though - we got stuck in the mud for an hour and had to be dug out by people from the local IDP Camp, we then turned the corner to find lorries over-turned and coaches stuck in the mud balancing on their sides!

We then headed to Murchison Falls for a much needed rest and safari, staying in luxurious lodges right on the bank of the Nile, although Triny and I found a black snake in our room, which was not so pleasing!  We saw enough hippos, crocodiles and monkeys to last a life time, and fortunate to see giraffe and elephants, which was incredible.

After another eventful and stressful car journey back to Kampala we were relieved to be back at Chez-Max's.  Alhtough unfortunatley Max became really ill on the first night back!  The first hospital I took him to said he had malaria, so started to treat him for that!  He didn't show anysigns of getting any better, so we moved him to another hospital, run by a Christian English doctor - Dr Dick!  Dr Dick, said that he didn't have malaria (unless God had healed him) but the worst case of disentary he had ever seen!

It was very sad to say goodbye to Triny and JPS who left back for England on Monday. - Let's just say, we'd shared alot!

Praise God, Max is out of hospital and much better now.  I was secretly relieved to  spend the week just chilling at his place and recuperating after all that we had been through, and spending time playing with the kids at the orphanage (kids that he's brought back from an IDP camp a few weeks back).

I flew back to Kenya this morning, and Salls will be arriving this evening, for a week of Safari and beach!!  Nothing can possibly go wrong there, can it?