Despite sleeping on the floor to dodge bullets on his first visit to Uganda in 1986, Cam McLeay says the country has been the ideal place to do business and to raise his young family.
Cam McLeay moved to the central African country from Lake Hayes to start Adrift - Uganda's first commercial tourism rafting venture on the Nile River - in 1996, and soon built a base of loyal staff.
Thanks in no small part to his adventurous and entrepreneurial spirit, the rafting industry has since become an ingrained part of Ugandan adventure tourism - "like bungy in New Zealand", Mr McLeay says.
While the eastern African nation may not strike everyone as the ideal place for a start-up business, the opportunities for rafting on the source of the Nile was what drew Mr McLeay to the country.
Having experienced more than their share of troubles in the past and with an ongoing conflict in the northern part of the country, the Ugandan people are very poor.
But while the country has a long way to go, Mr McLeay says businessmen like him are helping promote stability by offering jobs and training.
He says there is a lot to be learned from Ugandan people who have very little in terms of material goods but judge their wealth in their families and children.
"There is always a smile on their faces and if there isn't, a laugh is only ever a couple of words away," he says.
The country has also been mostly recession-free.
When asked about the effects of the global credit crunch, Mr McLeay says there haven't been many, due to the unwillingness of most people to lend money.
"When I changed from a pre-pay to a post-pay [plan] mobile I got hundreds of texts congratulating me," Mr McLeay said.
"The fact someone is willing to give you credit is a status symbol."
Tourism in to the country also seems stable with Adrift benefiting from budget-conscious travellers seeking more for their money, he says.
"Our adventure product is at the budget end of the market - we are 20% up from last year," he said.
However, life is hard for most Ugandans and while Mr McLeay used to struggle with the concept of running a profitable business surrounded by such poverty, he has since seen the benefits he and others like him have brought to the country.
Many of Adrift's employees had been subsistence farmers before becoming involved with the company - many are now in senior management positions - and Mr McLeay will leave it in their hands when he eventually brings his family back to New Zealand.
Not only has the opportunity of stable employment helped his employees, it has helped the wider community through education and providing an outlet for local farmers to sell their crops, he says.
Having introduced white-water rafting on the Nile River 13 years ago, Mr McLeay says Adrift has shown it is there for the long term - unlike many aid programmes which last only 18 months to two years.
"Many of the aid agencies come in and run programmes ... provide employment and pay far too much , giving people false expectations," he said.
Once they finished their contracts, the agencies moved on to the next project, leaving unemployed locals in their wake.
"We provide our staff with skills and we have provided them with English lessons and first-aid courses and a secure job," he says.
Entrepreneurs such as Mr McLeay are known as "investors" in Africa and their contributions and presence are appreciated by the Ugandan people and government, he says.
He is often consulted as an adviser in the country's growing tourism industry and has been a passionate advocate of protecting the environment, which is also a mountain gorilla habitat.
"Tourism is often referred to as the hidden export ... in terms of bringing foreign money into the country," he says.
The company is working on a new project - building a lodge on an island in the middle of the river, which will showcase the beauty of the Rwenzori Mountains in western Uganda.
When looking for new employees, he asks existing workers if they have family members looking for work, partly to support the local community and also because the original family members have a vested interest and pride in keeping the new employees focused on the job, he says.
"It works both ways."
When he began Adrift, the McLeay family was still living in New Zealand with Mr McLeay visiting his company often.
That changed when the family went to Uganda while he set up a new venture about eight years ago.
"The changes which back in New Zealand seemed like they would take three months actually took about a year in Africa."
"There is a different way of doing business over there," he says.
As the time stretched out, he and his Australian-born wife Kate, a teacher, decided it was the ideal place to bring up their young family.
"Ugandans measure their wealth in children ...
"I had always felt welcome there but when I took my children there it was a whole new experience," he said.
Mr McLeay says the area around the capital Kampala is more peaceful than most cities in New Zealand, but admits his first experience of Uganda in 1986 was much more dangerous.
The country was still plagued by a political instability that dated from then Prime Minister Milton Obote's 1966 suspension of the constitution.
His regime was followed by that of Idi Amin, who seized power for most of the 1970s, before Obote returned for another period at the helm, marked by a bloody guerrilla war.
Obote was deposed again in 1985, and shortly thereafter Mr McLeay visited the country for the first time.
"We went to the [Lake] Victoria area in 1986," he says.
"At that stage there was a curfew at night and when we stayed in the YMCA [in the capital Kampala], we slept on the floor because there were bullet holes in the windows and if you sat up in bed you were above that line."
However, he fell in love with the Nile River and the rapids on which he would later operate one of the country's first adventure tourism ventures.
"I vowed I would come back and I did, even though it took 10 years," he says.
There are still troubles in northern Uganda - an ongoing war between government troops and the Lord's Resistance Army, which has become known for its brutal use of child soldiers.
However, Mr McLeay's son Archie (11) backed up his father that the south is safe.
"It is fine - there are no problems around our area," he says.
The family of five often visits friends in Arrowtown and will return permanently to New Zealand in 18 months when Archie, the eldest, is ready for high school.
But Mr McLeay will not turn his back on the country or the business and is sure Adrift will continue to thrive under the management of operations director Dennis Ntege.
"He oversees all the day-to-day running of the business now," Mr McLeay says.
"I mostly do the business development side of things."
While the family's time in Uganda is running out, Mr McLeay says he will remain connected to the people of Uganda.
"It is inspiring that people who have so little can have such a large spirit."
Adrift's next project is Wildwaters Lodge, a retreat on an island between the raging White Nile rapids.
