Tuesday, 19.2. - Transit to Fort Portal

10 AM: after an odyssey-like ride through the city of Kampala to the dental clinic, Dr. Tom fixes Mr. Christian's top right molar with a patch of the good old composite. A subsequent consultancy call with home lets me waive Dr. Tom's  friendly offer to mandate him for more extensive dental restructuring over the next weeks - pending the sustainability of today's fix, this will have to wait until I am back in Frankfurt.
Just in time and as promised, our drivers Patrick and Thadeus from MMU pick us up from the Sheraton at 1:30 PM. Their ride from Fort Portal took them about 5 h (for 300 km), so we expect to arrive there at 6:30. On the quite bumpy detour through one of Kampala's suburbs to the main road, Felix pointedly observes the quality of the roads  is not too far away from those in Cologne. Actually, there are more noteworthy parallels between Cologne and Kampala: both cities deal with unfinished  subway projects - at least Cologne by now can boast with one train commuting between 2 stations while Kampala can  only offer a  subway entrance, but no subway at all. Kampala's ancient city library however is still standing...

Kampala Subway - 'Godot' Line ...

The Ugandan National Library - still standing strong

After a 5h transit  along an uncounted number of huts, fruitstands and schools as well as over an even less countable number of traffic pacifying bumpers we finally reach Fort Portal, our final destination and workplace for the next 3-4 weeks.
After checking in at the Fort Portal Paradise Lodge, dinner at the Mountains of the Moon hotel with Oliver Schmidt (who recently became dean of the faculty), Philipp and Felix (#2), all three from GIZ. More facts about the university: founded 7 years ago, ca. 1.500 students as of today with roughly 110 students going for the financial industry - scattered across 3 years, i.e. ca. 40 students per semester. After all, we are getting closer to our target group and finally can start the project work we are here for.