By Will Ross, correspondent, Uganda, 17 May 2005

Just weeks before setting off for Uganda I was sent to a far tougher part of the world: Essex. During three years in east Africa, I have certainly never come up against anybody quite as scary as the ex-Welsh Guard who kept us on our toes during the hostile environment course.

But to make the course more relevant to a posting in Kampala, the Ugandan capital, I suggest a full day on precarious methods of transport. The traffic jams can be so long and the demonstrations so short that travelling by car might lead to the whole story being missed.

There is the option of cheating and turning to a sound effects library in order to pretend that I was there. But this isn’t recommended in the BBC guidelines and besides it is not easy to find recordings of Moslem women demonstrating for the right for Moslem men to marry four wives.

Few sound effects libraries can provide you with angry young men shouting slogans against Bob Geldof. (in response to a call by Geldof for the Ugandan president to give up power and go away).

So this is where the motorbike taxi comes in.

I pay the equivalent of 17 pence to travel on the back of a 50cc machine which might struggle up Kampala’s numerous hills, but cuts through the traffic like a knife through… well fairly hard butter with lumps in it.

Battered Toyota

Crash helmets are a legal requirement – bizarrely not for the passenger but for the man (partially) in control of the machine.

I hold on for dear life and keep my knees in as we squeeze between a battered Toyota Corolla and a truck laden with long horned cattle.

These are the kind of tips they need to cover on those hostile environment courses in Essex. It is all very well learning how to clear a minefield with a Bic biro but how do you keep your knees intact in a Ugandan traffic jam?

I have headed into the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo on several occasions – not on the back of a moped but via a far superior mode of transport: a rusty Antonov cargo plane piloted by three Ukrainian men wearing flip flops and carrying a bottle of vodka.

I find take offs and landings terrifying on all airlines. But on an Antonov with no seats, let alone seat belts, most of the time is spent clinging on in an attempt to remain in the same part of the plane for the whole flight.

Now I remember the map reading exercise in Essex. Forward for 300 metres and then take a bearing of 100 degrees off the compass and bingo! There is the former Welsh guard disguised as a holly bush – the red moustache giving it all away.

Touch down

But armed with a map of eastern Congo on a scale of 1:1,000,000 it is very easy to get lost however well you performed on the course. ‘The town of Bunia is just over an hour away,’ said the satellite phone wielding businessman as he took my 150 dollars.

Four airports later we arrived – eight hours after setting off. Oh, well, at least I could play spot the airport on my map each time we touched down.

Because I gave up my post as a senior producer in the African Service to do this job, I am not currently allowed to apply for many BBC jobs as I’m now considered non-staff. So for the time being I am Will Ross, keeping my knees tucked in, for BBC News, Kampala.

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