Ground Breaking

Last week we received an invitation for a ground breaking ceremony. Because we take Fridays off from home-schooling, this was the perfect morning outing for the kids and me. We brought our quiet and obedient Rottweiler along for the walk, as the event was in our neighborhood.

The local government has hired a Chinese road construction company to repair Church Road. Hopefully they'll pave it, and pave it well. Sometimes a badly paved road is worse than a dirt road. Here are the kids and Ellie, our dog, in front of some of the construction vehicles.

Events usually have tents set up to protect the guests from either rain or hot sun. Fortunately, on this day, the tents gave us relief from the sun, not the rain. We never know which we'll have. In classic fashion, the guests of honor were seated at a table in the front. In this case, I know one is the mayor of Entebbe, and another is the Commissioner. I didn't catch the names and titles of the others. What surprised me was watching how many of the special guests talked/texted on their phones during the ceremony. Do they do that in America as well these days?

This local band played while a few groups of school students marched to the celebration site. We missed the marching, though we could hear the band from our house. The invitation said 9:00am, but if ten years in East Africa has taught us anything, it's to arrive an hour and a half later, which is when things actually started happening as the guests of honor had arrived about that time as well.

All events here include "some small speeches." This phrase can actually mean "many lengthy speeches" The event started with an opening prayer, followed by the speeches. In this case, the woman here is the LC, or liaison with the government, for our neighborhood. She also helps solve disputes. She did a nice job of welcoming everyone and kept it pretty short.

Then the band started playing again. Imagine our surprise as we were focused on the band, when we turned around and found this young girl! Wow! Not only was she a serious contortionist, but she was performing on a slippery tablecloth on top of a small table! I kept worrying the cloth would slip right off while she was in the middle of posing.

Luckily, she did it all perfectly while everyone snapped photos or videos with their cell phones (having stopped talking/texting). The next speaker asked what she eats to stay so flexible. Behind her you can see several photographers/videographers as well as 3 groups of students in their uniforms, grey/white (L), pink/white (C), and green/white (R). The building behind them is a private kindergarten, but to the left of the photo, beyond what you can see, is also a public primary school.

This is the head engineer giving his speech, and introducing the Chinese construction crew. This was the last photo I got as Cooper became increasingly uncomfortable about two things: the length of his time at the event, and the concern that they would fire up those huge construction vehicles and run us all over.

Honestly, my longevity at these sorts of events is rather pathetic as well. To my credit, it runs in my family; just ask my dad. It's nice to have a small kid as an excuse to leave. Whatever will I do when I've no little tikes to take me out of this sort of thing? All that aside, we're thankful that someone is doing something about our roads, even if it's one road at a time. No one likes to get stuck in a pothole which is inside of a speed bump!