Hello. This is Ami this time to start off with. I haven't kept a journal or been involved with the team's blog so I thought I would have a go on this one, even though most of you are Naomi's friends and don't really care what I think haha! Naomi and Dad have probably told you what has been going on for the majority of the trip so I'll just give you a few of my highlights….so far! Africa: • Seeing the difference in lifestyle here, seeing the rich and the poor separated in a more obvious way than in England. • My lowest but most interesting time so far has been when we were all in the bus outside KPC and I decided to open my window. As I did so, a young woman with a young baby girl came to my window and she was begging me for money or something to help her. It was obvious to see that the baby girl had a disease of some kind in her legs but also the young lady bent the baby girl's head over to reveal a nasty infection on her head. It was my first encounter like this and I found it incredibly hard to have to turn away and shake my head (which is what we had been told to do in such circumstances). I cried all the way back to the guest house as I saw more and more children and young ladies begging on the streets. Safari: • Seeing a hippo about 2m away from me at the lodge, just parading around the lawn, then learning that it had been munching on the grass right outside my balcony while I was sleeping! • Seeing a lion and lioness when the other group didn't!!!!!!!! hahahahaha These are just a few highlights from my time in Uganda so far. I'll let the others carry on! ……………………………………………………………………………………………… Hello it's Naomi now! I would write properly but I am soooo tired it has been a very long day - we set off at 9 and arrived, lots of driving and short stops later, at about 5.30! The safari was brilliant and Dad will tell you about everything since the last blog - but it is impressive! Miss you all and lots of love, Naomi x ……………………………………………………………………………………………… Stuart now: After writing to you yesterday we went on another game drive late in the afternoon. We saw a couple of new species - some vervet monkeys just sitting in a tree right next to the road, and a bush buck (which is a bit rare because they tend to live in bushes so are hard to spot), but unfortunately no more lion or leopard - which we were hoping for. Leopards are very rare because there are only seven in the entire national park, so we weren't that surprised not to see one. We heard that a whole pride of lions had been wiped out by eating diseased cattle - so there aren't many of them either - but of course WE SAW TWO! (Did we mention that?) Naomi did get an excellent video clip of a family of elephants right next to the road side, with baby elephants running out behind their mother. After returning back to the Safari Lodge we had a posh barbecue where I ate goat steak amongst other things. After the meal there was a very impressive display of Ugandan dancing accompanied by drummers - they tried to get some of us to join in but we explained we were English and thus don't do dancing. This morning I woke early so went down to the reception and sat in a look-out post as the sun came up. Immediately there was a tremendous dawn chorus and hundreds of tiny birds whizzed around in the bushes. Huge marabou storks swept by on thermals and a fish eagle hovered over the water. Then the hippos started grunting and snorting from the water. It was like being the only person in the Garden of Eden. We had to leave at 9am for the long journey back to Kampala, but curiously again we found the journey very interesting. Having lived in a rich man's paradise for the last two days we were confronted with abject poverty as we passed back through roadside shanty towns with grubby children running around with hardly any clothes on outside one-room shacks built of mud bricks and corrugated iron roofs. Yet they all waved and shouted Bye or Mzungu as we passed and waved from the bus. Mzungu means "white people" - so they obviously don't see too many of us… Naomi had been a bit peeved when she heard that the safari park we were going to didn't have any zebras because she has been mad keen on zebras since an early age. The high point for her, therefore, was when we saw four zebras from the bus on the way home. We had been forewarned there was a possibility of spotting some but it was in the middle of an area where there were villages and lots of shrubbery so it was a bit of a long shot. But we did! And we have the photos to prove it. At breakfast Naomi had also spotted a huge crocodile in the water, so she was well chuffed with herself - all the crocs we saw yesterday were much smaller. Tomorrow we're off to Jinja which is the start of the River Nile out of Lake Victoria. We're hoping to eat jinja cake as we sail down the Nile and see some of the first cataracts on the river.