Entebbe – Tuesday August 7th

From way back when, I have always wanted to see Entebbe Airport. That might seem a little bizarre to most people but it has held a mild fascination for me ever since the Israeli hostage rescue in 1976. A week after that outrageous feat, myself and two fellow intrepid and adventurous seventeen year old school friends, Bill Shipsey and Dave McCann, flew to Israel to work on a Kibbutz for the summer.

I won’t tell you the story of that journey other than to say that our seven hour travel schedule took two days. And during those two days we enjoyed bomb scares, body searches, flight diversions, military escorts and enough excitement to leave an indelible imprint on our impressionable young minds – and all because Idi Amin allowed Israeli hostages to be held at Entebbe.

So off I headed with my new friend Nasser on the short seventy kilometre spin down to Entebbe. The best part of a fabulous new road has already been constructed between Kampala and Entebbe but Nasser said that the old road would be quicker for some reason.

So there it was, laid out before me, and after all these years, seeing it as I rock up on an Irish registered motorbike felt a bit surreal.

There has been little by way of modifications to the building and it was pretty much as I had imagined it to be. Nasser and I went in to the terminal which confused the legion of security personnel, as they were suspiciously unable to understand why anyone would come to an airport unless they were either going somewhere or collecting someone.

This is the area where the hostages were held and, hard as I tried, I couldn’t see any bullet holes anywhere. We stayed for a while pottering around and lo and behold, there before me was a shop selling Jameson whiskey. I bought a bottle as a gift for my hosts, although the seller was reluctant to let me buy it without a boarding pass. I showed her a $20 bill and telling her that she could keep the $3 change helped. When she said that I must be from the local U.N. base I assured her that I was and off we popped with our little piece of Ireland.

After we got back I started preparing my pannier bags for the next morning. When I looked outside my window there were the two lads washing Simba.

I produced the Jameson after dinner and between all of us (except young Sammi) the litre bottle got polished off to a backdrop of the Riverdance video belting it out on my iPad. Thankfully it wasn’t Ramadan for this delightful young moslem family…..