Another shanty town we visited in Kampala was called Kisenyi.  It doesn’t get much more shanty than this.

This is a brewery, distilling their own ghetto beer.  They’re drying millet and grain & roll it out in old oil drums.  Mmmm.

They must sell it hear, cos I hear it’s delicious.

The Hosanna school is in the middle of this heavily Somali area, and has been supported by Link to help complet a classroom building project and running an activity programme in the school.

I found this little dude was running round the school grounds.

Link International also aim to improve the school games facilities as well as run creative activity sessions with the children, and encourage the whole community through a football project.

Every Sunday, the School becomes a church service.  It essentially runs all day and you can dip in & out for as long as your desire.

We had a bit of drama from the kids.

Some serious Africa worship.

Dancing kids

And more worship.

We were planning to revisit this school over the next few days, to teach and play, but this was the night of the world cup final.

The night 3 bombs went off in Kampala.  The main ones, admittedly detonated by Somali Al Qaeda terrorists, went off at a rugby ground showing the game on a big screen literally 5 minutes down the road from the house we were staying at.  It doesn’t bear thinking about, but had England not been so bab we might have been there.  However, the next day we decided it was wisest to get out of the city and head for the Link International campsite in South East Uganda.

So tune in at 9am tomorrow (Saturday) for the Queen Elizabeth Safari Camp project leg!

_________________________________________________________

Link Up:

Read more about Link International’s Uganda projects on their facebook page here.

Download all the web-ready images from my blog trip here.

If you’d like to donate to their fantastic causes, visit their site here.

Read the Link director Tim Hall’s blog here.

One of the many interesting projects run by Link International around Kampala (The Ugandan Capital) is in what they call the ‘beads community’.

Women fleeing from Northern Uganda during a war where their husbands were killed by the LRA created a refugee slum.  An already matriarchal society, they earned their substandard living mining nearby rock…

… and turning it by hand into commercial rubble.The community has become large & has sprawled into a slum bursting with children

I loved this little chaps homemade car on a string

This smart hotel caught my eye too, thought I couldn’t find it in the Lonely Planet.

A typical African scene

Cheeky

The men are famously lazy in this society, leaving the women & children to earn money, cook and raise the young children.

This kind of apathy, while living on the poverty line was a bit much for some in our group to take.

However, a Link volunteer visiting Uganda on a fact finding mission for a craft trade project they had in mind to help develop western commercial links with very poor communities met some of these residents at their stall in nearly slum market. It turned out they also made beads from old newspaper/magazine strips & made them into bead necklaces & bracelets.

This project has blossomed into a fair-trade type project called ‘TRADE-LINK’ and now the beads are selling well all over the UK.

Trade-Link hopes to free them from the gruelling work of crushing stones.We came with the St David’s kids to learn what how locals create the beads

We clambered inside possibly the hottest, least ventilated building I’ve ever been in and learned how to roll beads.

It’s basically rolling & gluing long triangular strips of old magazine & varnishing them together.

The necklaces look rather smart eh?  So rather than making my own, I bought Clare & mum some.

This is the lady organising things at this end.

And here are many hands making light work.

Gotta love that bounce flash in a dark room!

While we cooked…

…the windows filled up with fascinated onlookers, eager to glimpse the “mizungus” (“tourist”)

Jenny is hoping to take some back to sell in the UK.

It’s amazing what poverty & lateral thinking can do.

These 11 kids are now all in school as a consequence of the beads project and Link International’s influence.

I’m thinking it might be some time before our girls get their own jewellery companies…

Back outside on the walk back I caught this ace gent, with his wheel & stick, cutting a fine impression of a photographer!

This little sausage link was also being adorable.

This is the thing – there are kids everywhere, and they love to be photographed.

Strolling back at dusk, I caught this one from the hip as Joe, Stewart & the gang stroll back.

It sounds lame, but it’s when they hold hands with you that you really realise they’re real.

A catch of the team bidding their farewells as we set off back into dusty Kampala.

Join me tomorrow (Friday) at 9am for a look at a slum Sunday Service at Hosanna Church in downtown Kampala.

_________________________________________________________

Link Up:

Read more about Link International’s Uganda projects on their facebook page here.

Download all the web-ready images from my blog trip here.

If you’d like to donate to their fantastic causes, visit their site here.

Read the Link director Tim Hall’s blog here.

As 3 experienced wedding photographers, Phil Barber, Rob Booker & I are all way excited about our next 3B Media photo workshop: ‘One Day Weddings’.  We’re going to share all about how we go photograph and prepare for our weddings, and offer tips on how to make headway in the business.

The course is being held in one one West Yorkshire’s finest boutique hotels and is ideally suited to aspiring amateurs and professionals entering the world of wedding photography.  Download a course brochure by clicking here.

The course is on Tuesday 14th September 2010 and costs just £225 per delegate including lunch and refreshments.  We understand midweek dates aren’t ideal for many full-timers, but book it as holiday and prepare to take the next step towards a full-filling business!  There are only a few places left (as we restrict numbers to keep groups personal), so get in quick to reserve your place by calling Lou on 0113 238 1011, by emailing info@3bmedia.co.uk or booking on the 3B Media website here.

If you’re eager to get into the world of creative, professional wedding photography then get involved in our 3B Media’s inspiring workshop!

Spending nearly a month driving up & down Kenya & Uganda, I shot a lot of images out of vehicle windows.

I’ve posted a few already from the Kenya Drive, but here are a few that (I think) give a flavour of what Kampala & it’s surrounding area look like.

Street life

Those brick kilns I mentioned, eternally cooking mud at the roadside.

I like this one too.  Sometimes as you zoom past & squeeze, the composition takes care of itself

Every other shop is a pork joint or a banana stand

Photo studio!

One of the link minivan vehicles heading into the slums

Veg market

I love that you see 6ft square wooden boxes that say stuff like ‘restaurant’, ’saloon’ & ‘hotel’ on them

The view outside the car was generally better than inside…

Tune in tomorrow (Thursday) at 9am to hear about the beads community project

_________________________________________________________

Link Up:

Read more about Link International’s Uganda projects on their facebook page here.

Download all the web-ready images from my blog trip here.

If you’d like to donate to their fantastic causes, visit their site here.

Read the Link director Tim Hall’s blog here.

Greetings y’all! Most of you will be aware that I’ve spent the past month in Kenya & Uganda.  Above are the full team that endured my constant snapping.

I’ve decided to make the ‘web-ready’ (ie. blog/emailable/facebook size) images available for all (team or otherwise) to download here from my blog, to share and spread around.

You probably won’t be surprised to hear that there are loads of images, so I’ve split the sets into 2 major links:

1. The Kenya Drive (376 Images: 38 Megs)

2. Uganda 2010 (731 images: 80 Megs)

Remember they are large files and may take a while to download.

If you’d rather download a smaller, bite-size section of the trip you can also set the zip folder downloading use the links below:

Kenya Drive – Part 1: Home>Malindi
Kenya Drive – Part 2: Malindi>Lake Navasha
Kenya Drive – Part 3: Lake Navasha>Jinja
Kenya Drive – Part 4: Jinja>Kampala
Uganda Projects – Part 1: Maya School & Maternity Project
Uganda Projects – Part 2: Maya School & Water Project
Uganda Projects – Part 3: Hosanna Slum Church & Beads Project
Uganda Projects – Part 4: Camping & Queen Elizabeth Safari
Uganda Projects – Part 5: Camping & Pioneering

I’m continuing to document the stories behind the images on my blog over this week, but thought I’d host all the images for peeps to download.

I’d like to also take this opportunity to thank all the most excellent people who I shared this experience with.  You rule.

Enjoy.

Barnasnorus Rex

_________________________________________________________

Link Up:

Read more about Link International’s Uganda projects on their facebook page here.

If you’d like to donate to their fantastic causes, visit their site here.

Read the Link director Tim Hall’s blog here.

Another of the Link Projects is a short walk down the road from the Maya school

And the Maya kids did enjoy following us around and having their picture taken.

When they saw their likeness on my camera LCD they’d loose their minds, pulling, tugging & for some strange reason, licking, my camera!

I like this little story teller.

This is the 2nd link project we visited, the Maternity unit they’re building in the area.

Basically, in July 2007, a 17 year old St David’s pupil called Christina came back from a similar Uganda visit with a huge compassion for mums and babies and their maternity care (1:8 mothers die in child birth in some parts of Africa).  She revisited Uganda in 2008 and selected a site for a maternity clinic, bought land and with the help of 2 other past pupils of St David’s College, now studying architecture, drew up plans and began building a maternity unit.  The challenge is to raise £35k to build this maternity clinic and have it operational by December 2009.

It all appears to be coming along nicely.

In much of Africa, you see mud bricks being kilned and baked by the roadside.  These bricks cost, so the link team invested in sustainable brick making machines to create mud, sand & cement mix bricks that don’t require kilning for their building projects.  They also pay the local community to help make them.

The girls with the first brick we made

They’re also rather cunning as they are grooved to fit together without cement.  Cheeky

Here are the chaps digging the mud to mix with sand & cement.

I thought it rude not to give it a pop.

Another part of the maternity project will be to tap a local spring, about 500m down a steep, windy path from the village & maternity centre and pipe water up to a tank for the community & villagers to use…

…because at the moment the locals have to collect their water in gerry cans…

and push them up to their homes.

This special little girl was without a doubt the sweetest girl I met.  Super mild mannered & wanted to hold my hand as we walked.  It’s interesting, as a photographer it’s quite detached being behind a camera to document the goings on.  But when I found a little hand reaching up to hold mine, I felt connected somehow.

We strolled around rambling in our own languages.  She’d arbitrarily reply to my questions with “yes”, “no” or “Yesno”, covering all bases really.

Those not bricking themselves, helped with the water project, digging a trench for the pipes.

The ground was less than forgiving and our team managed to make a good 100m trench before their time was out.

Here’s John, one of the Kenya Drive dudes, the chap planning the water project & Sam in the background.

Those not interested in digging or bricking spent time playing games with the kids.

Paul & Darryl, all blistered up, after a good graft.

A past St David’s pupil has moved into pioneering nursing in UK and working with a number of Health Authorities and Nursing Schools as well as a Pharmaceutical Company.  He joined this trip to look into showing training institutions and medical businesses how they could ‘adopt’ a maternity/medical clinic project like this one as their own.  The Link team are essentially developing amall-scale, appropriate level technology, sustainable maternity/health care clinics, that could then be replicated rapidly in the poorest and most remote parts of Africa and radically improve basic health care and give babies and mums a greater chance of survival.  The benefits for these institutions is extensive, including community building humanitarian work and developing-world experience.

Pretty cool eh?

In another related story, Christina in a slum meeting with a kid Link were hoping to help and found a desperately poor grandmother living in squalor in a tiny one room shack with 5 children who’s parents had died.  She decided this wouldn’t do and has since, with the Link family raised enough money to build her and the kids this house by the Maternity centre.

Here’s Link’s adopted grandma, showing us her weaving skills too.  She rocks.

Tune in at 9am tomorrow (Wednesday) for some of my fave grabs caught passing through the streets of Uganda.

_________________________________________________________

Link Up:

Read more about Link International’s Uganda projects on their facebook page here.

Download all the web-ready images from my blog trip here.

If you’d like to donate to their fantastic causes, visit their site here.

Read the Link director Tim Hall’s blog here.

So – with the Ambulance safely delivered to the Kampalan Lions Club & the two 4×4 vehicles delivered to customs to complete their importing, we ventured to the Link International compound to begin the 2nd phase of my African adventure – to document the work & projects of the Charity Link International.

Link International are very closely tied with St David’s College in Wales, and every year students join Link International to visit Uganda to help on the projects as well as have a unique African holiday, off the tourist trail.  This year there were around 16 kids aged 16>20 on the trip, as well as a bunch of teachers and adult volunteers.

Tim Hall is the school chaplain, all round ace chap and another honcho in the Link International team.

So the first of their  projects to be visited was what they called the Maya School project, a private school in the burbs of Kampala, Uganda’s Capital.  Local parents pay £50 per year to send their children here and Link have helped on various levels.

It was most excellent meeting and greeting the kids.

The school bell (read: wheel hub) was rung…

…and class lined up for us.

A little gift of stationary brought over by the team

While the St. David’s gang played games with the kids…

I caught a few teachers & kids excitedly noseying through the cases.

A few pix of their classrooms…

…and school books.

Tim’s trying to raise some money to plaster this wall and fix the windows.

We revisited the school a few times, to get involved in teaching & entertaining.  Here’s Stewart, one of the volunteers giving it teach.

So many faces.

Look at that beam!

Lucy, showing respect!

Glen, an English teacher showing a chap his picture.  They go mad for this.

The classrooms had no artificial lighting, and for the photo geeks out there, I generally bounced off-camera TTL flash off the corrugated tin school roof to fill the shots with light.  But for this portrait above I switched it off for this one as the light coming through the door was so tasty.

Our kids helping their kids.

A cheeky face during breaktime.

Lucy with one of the pictures the kids painted.

Adorable little faces.

Lots of heads in one classroom.

A bit of 1-2-1 from Zoe to Marvin, a chap who didn’t seem able to even write his name.

Graham from the drive team brought some of his footballs for the kids to play with during their outdoor ed classes.

Our pro gymnastics coach, Titch, ran various amusing games for the kids to enjoy

Greg, making a young chap seriously happy

This annex of two classrooms was added onto the school by the Link Team and Tim is looking for fund raising to help decorate them inside.

It was fantastic joining these kids for a few days in their life.  They’re generally super poor, but an impressively happy bunch.

Tune in tomorrow (Tuesday) at 9am for the Link Maternity project!

_________________________________________________________

Link Up:

Read more about Link International’s Uganda projects on their facebook page here.

Download all the web-ready images from my blog trip here.

If you’d like to donate to their fantastic causes, visit their site here.

Read the Link director Tim Hall’s blog here.

After the border run, we ran pretty short on options of places to stay.  The place gav had in mind had a non-english speaking guard on duty who wouldn’t let us stay, so after cruising round town we heard about a big hotel that might host us.  So at half-midnight we rolled in, 9 tired foreigners and asked if we could camp in their grounds.  The lady on duty said not really, as there was a conference group in, but she had one spare room.  So we negotiated to sleep 4 of us in one room (2 sharing the bed, 2 on the floor) and the others’d sleep in the vehicles, and we’d all have to pay £3 each for breakfast.  It’s amusing how this would work the otherway round in the UK: 9 kenyans rolling up in the middle of the night asking to sleep in you carpark.

That night, wedged on my back between John & the bathroom door, I apparently snored away at quite a volume, right into Johns ear.

Since then I’ve been called ‘Barnasnorus Rex’.

Anyhoos – The final leg of our Kenya Drive adventure was head to the capital to drop the ambulance with the Kampalan Lions.

Armed with a new guidebook we hit the road.

A couple of shots out the window caught my eye, including Dam’s Port Joint

Kenya’s ubiquitous ‘bodaboda’ (motorbike taxi) drivers waiting for a fare.

The Mandela Stadium, a veritable UFO of a building on the way into central Kampala

Everywhere around Kenya & Uganda, mud bricks are made & roasted in a mud kilns.

We made it!

We leave the Ambulance for a clean at a local carwash…

…and swing by the Link International centre for a cuppa.  Nothing like a nice brew after a long drive.

The team and John, the Link International director out in Uganda.

Collecting the Lions freshly buffed vehicle, Bob says: “You can’t polish a turd, but you can roll it in glitter”

Graham, Bob & Titch have become quite attached to this old dog.

Freshly showered we hit the Kampala club with the team for the handover, and enjoy a few cheeky beers.  We said we’d be arriving today at 2pm, they thought tomorrow at 6pm.

T.I.A.

Several Lions joined in thanking us for the ambulance, which they’re going to convert into a mobile eye clinic, while we enjoyed a chinese banquet

Over went the keys

Kenya Drive 2010: Mission accomplished!

Over the next two weeks, I joined Link International for the 2nd leg of my Ugandan experience.  They’re paired up with St. David’s College in Wales, and every year around a whole bunch of pupils fly out for 2 weeks to pitch in with the ongoing Link International projects around Kampala, making bricks, digging trenches and seeing a new world, before going quad-biking and on safari.  So I stuck around to document the goings on.  Tune in soon for more!

We arrived at the Kenya / Uganda border early doors, as it’s not only notoriously slow, but we were attempting to import vehicles.

Once gav had finally dodged a potential £1500 fine for not stopping our vehicles at every Kenyan police checkpoint (even though we were never told to do so), our passports received exit stamps, we switched up Kenyan to Ugandan Shillings and crossed the bridge into Uganda.  That took about 3hrs.

Then we waited.

The Ugandan officials triple checked our engine serials matched the 7 forms.

We waited some more.

While Gav relayed back and forth across the bridge to get the Kenyan officials to stamp his forms differently, we waited a bit more.

We took a stroll into the border town in search of tuna and fanta.

And came back with a new beer!  Ugandan Nile Special!

We found some new drivers!

A new football squad appeared.

Yet more time passed as Gav shuttled yet more, refusing to leave the irate Kenyan boss’s office till he got the stamp he’d promised.

Finally, 12 hours, lots of tuna sarnies & football matches later, we rolled out, only to find we had three more border checkpoints to stop at and it was pitch when we set off down the famously dangerous Jinja road into Uganda.

Tomorrow at 9: Kampala bound!

It was ace to have a few days R&R at Lake Naivaisha

HERE’S JONNY! ‘Coching‘ in a hammock.

Here’s my Kenyan office, including my tasty new i7 macBook Pro & the the 50-500mm ‘Bigma’

Lake Naivaisha is famous for it’s hippo population and they’re known to chill out on the bank of our campsite.  So one morning, Jonboy & I got up at dawn to stalk.

But apart from a bit of rustling, we saw very little, and ended up photographing the cute jetty instead.

On our last day in Naivaisha we decided to cycle round Hell’s Gate National Park – Kenya’s smallest national park, at 26 square miles.  Our bikes we’re less than pretty and two of the team bailed out before even getting down the path to the entrance. 4 members of the group decided to nail it uphill round the 14km buffalo circuit, while John & I took the seemingly more sensible downhill canyon route.

Cycling round a wild animal reserve didn’t seem the most sensible option, but we were assured there weren’t many predators…

The park lined is lined with red cliffs and volcanic plugs, with working hot springs (tapped behind the scenes by a massive geothermal plant)

We caught a few warthogs doing their thing, and ended up humming the lion king soundtrack.

Pumba: “Gee. I always thought they were balls of gas burning billions of miles away.”

The park did have some pretty scenery

A random Massai kid popped out of the woods and took John & I up to this viewpoint as the sun started to drop

It doesn’t get more Kenyan landscape than this eh?

I can’t work out which image I prefer out of the two above.

Once we’d seen this view, and already cycled non-stop for a good few hours, we decided to head homeward.  Little did we know that that’d be another 2 hrs cycling as the sun fell.  We became concerned that all we had was half a 500ml bottle of water and a camera each to fend for ourselves.  After too many evil hills and a sneaking feeling we’d been on the wrong road for some time, we finally passed a neighbouring camp & rejoiced with weary little dance & an orange fanta.

Not long after we rocked in, saddle sore as hell, the other team rocked in in a Pajero stuffed with bikes.

Half way round the buffalo pass the already dusty road turned to deep sand, too far down to turn back and unsure how far lay ahead, gregs chain snapped and they were essentially stranded.  In a turn of fate, after returning to camp Graham & Phil decided fire up the blue 4×4 (which in retrospect would’ve been a far better mode of transport in the first place!) and head back to Hell.  We saw them pass us and when they caught up with the dudes sat at the roadside they essentially rescued the our lads, stuffing bikes in the truck and heading back to camp.

They look like they’ve just come out t’pit.

John & I must’ve cycled about 30 miles off-road and it’s safe to say we all slept well that night.

The next morning we packed camp, and plotted our course

Destination: somewhere near the Ugandan border.

Hell’s gate.  Don’t go on bike.

While stopping for petrol seems to be the time I get to shoot the townships. I like these donkey’s and the motorcycle blurring into shot.

Some adults here get quite stroppy if you point a camera at them, but I asked these kids & they let me snap away.

This leg of the journey took us up and over the Kenyan highlands, and the dust and sun turned to greet and rain.

A few snaps from the way past caught this fancy hotel.

Another road accident and a flamboyant kenyan.

I like this one, as it shows all the Kenyan components; brightly-coloured, wooden roadside buildings, wild animals and old tyres, someone hanging out their washing and a child in school uniform.

A busy street scene in Eldoret I think, one of Kenya’s bigger cities.

Rain wasn’t what I pictured in Kenya.

Pretty much by every roadside in Kenya is a bunch of men fixing a car.

Tomorrow we cross the Kenyan border into Uganda (Blog live at 9am).