Over the next few weeks I will try to post the entries from Matt’s journal of when he went to Kenya & Uganda.

It was a very exciting trip for Matt. He had spent nearly two years washing cars, gardening, and doing odd jobs with his friend Chris to raise the money needed to be able to go.

I was very worried about the trip, but as both Matt and my eldest son, Simon, would tell you I have always been a neurotic parent – and so although they would always listen politely (most of the time) to my worries and fears about whatever they wanted to do, I was usually out numbered and out voted!! I have to say, with the benefit of hindsight, that I am so glad that Matt went on this trip – they all had such a fantastic time.

There were one or two things that happened during their trip that did have an affect on us back home – but I’ll talk more about those when we get to them. For now …

 

DAY 1 – July 16th 2013       

“Today marked the beginning of my long awaited expedition to Western Kenya and Uganda, The culmination of nearly two years of planning and fundraising, and my reward for hard weeks of ‘A’ level revision.

I am sitting inside a Qatar Airways flight over the Tigris river near Kuwait, approaching our first destination: Doha. From there we have another long haul flight to Nairobi, where we will arrive sleep-deprived and slightly jet-lagged. However, I am slowly starting to feel the build up of excitement as we near the point where our real adventure begins. By we, I mean myself and eight other students from Queen Mary’s, along with our ex-Biology teacher/rugby coach Andy, and our ex-military expedition leader Craig. Today in itself couldn’t quite be described as white-knuckle; at least two hours involved hardcore Kenyan accounting with my fellow team financial director Callum. The rest of the flight so far has been whittled away watching Pixar’s “A Bug’s Life”. It was an early morning and it is going to be a late night, so I shall write more tomorrow when hopefully there will be more to talk about than a twelve hour flight.”