Our journey to Kampala began on a rainy Saturday morning in Helsinki. We met at the airport after 5 am, a bit of sleep and a lot of excitement in our eyes. During the 16 hours of travelling, we had some deep conversations, enjoyed the abundance of airplane food and some good movies. When we arrived in Entebbe airport, it was already dark, but we could feel the warm tropical wind and the summery smell of grass, flowers and trees.
On Sunday morning, after getting some rest after the travelling, we explored our hostel surroundings and got some essentials such as water and snacks. In the afternoon we already had our first meeting with the teacher and mentor from Aalto. After the meeting, we headed to Ndere Centre for a cultural night to see a dance and music performance that is inspired by the different tribes in Uganda. We also got to taste Ugandan food for the first time! Our partner PBL student teams joined us for the evening, and by the end of the night shy “Hello”s had turned into spontaneously dancing together!
The next day was our first official working day and, in the morning, we got a tour around Makerere University campus. Makerere campus is quite a lot bigger to the one we have in Otaniemi: it's on one of the seven hills in Kampala, and it’s actually like a small town, with nine colleges and around 40,000 students!
After lunch in CEDAT (College of Engineering, Design, Art and Technology) we had our first presentations about our projects with the other PBL teams, mentors and professors. The day was quite long, and in the end, we felt like we could have expressed our project idea in a clearer way. We started working towards avoiding complex and abstract words expressions when we present and ensuring that everyone in the group itself is on the same page about our project idea.