“Much of Africa would […] be crossed off my list of of possible pleasure trips with small children.”

Your Child Abroad: A Travel Health Guide by Dr Jane Wilson-Howarth and Dr Matthew Ellis (Bradt Travel Guides, Chalfont St Peter, 2005)

My better half reckons the reason I was taken to one side at Heathrow was because I look “swarthy”. Even after being subjected to a full body x-ray and having my fucking boots x-rayed as well for good measure, I ended up ahead of her and our offspring in the queue to get into the departure lounge.

The bus to the plane was full of yanks and ugandans. The ugandans were quiet, the yanks were loud. Some guy next to me was actually wearing a stetson and trying to talk to a girl about Texas on the flimsiest pretext. When this got him nowhere he burst out into a hymn. Quite clearly, there is no better way to begin a 9 hour flight. With missionaries. One of his fellows was seated across the aisle from us and had a laugh exactly like Boss Hogg from the Dukes of Hazard.

If you get off the plane at Entebbe Airport and look up you can see an office. Well, you would be able to see it, were it not for the fact that the entire window, from floor to ceiling, is completely taken up by yellowing, overflowing, lever arch files.

The quiet ugandans, the boisterous missionaries, and that room are as good a summary of what is going on in Uganda as any…