It's all good news now...

...because we left the taps running for a hundred years....

The Gorillaz song 'Pirate Jet' was on my mind for much of the trip around Uganda. 

We crossed the bridge over the Nile at Karuma, and almost immediately on the left were the first baboons of the trip that I'd seen. It isn't a very good photo - snatched as it was through the passenger window - but it shows the extent of the plastic problem we encountered in Uganda, even in the middle of nowhere.

On our first Sunday back in Sekamuli, Chris had spoken to the Church of his sadness at how the amount of plastic bottles left lying around had spiralled in recent years and he had become more aware on each of his return visits.

It's all good news now
Because we left the taps
Running
For a hundred years
So drink into the drink
A plastic cup of drink
Drink with a couple of people
The plastic creating people
Still connected to the moment it began

It's all good news now
Because we left the taps
Running
For a hundred years
So drink into the drink
A plastic cup of drink
Drink with a couple of people
The plastic creating people
Still connected to the moment it began

Songwriters: Damon Albarn / Jamie Hewlett
Pirate Jet lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

Way back on our first day when we had stopped on the shore of Lake Victoria to photograph the storks, we had been standing in a field of plastic debris. We did see a man with a barrow collecting them up, but there is no real recycling in Uganda - at least, not for plastics.

Our problem was that despite our efforts to minimise our use of plastic bottles, the fact that we couldn't rely on the tap-water meant that we had to buy some plastic bottles ourselves. Often, sodas in glass bottles are cheaper, because there is a deposit for glass bottles and they get re-used. It wasn't uncommon to buy a coke and receive it in a bottle that had clearly been reused many times.

This year the Church of England has raised awareness of the damage being done by the incredible amount of single-use plastics we use as a way of giving something up for Lent. I am finding it almost impossible to avoid them. Even if we recycle what we can. there is still a bin full of plastic film and wrappers going...somewhere?

Seeing the visual damage and the incredible scale of it in Uganda was gut-wrenching. When we place a virtue on convenience and cheapness there is different price to pay.