Community Open Day...31st March 2007...

...and what a day it was! Over 650 people attended our Community Open Day a few weeks ago (we at the Centre are still recovering from the experience). As you will see from the photos below, we had quite a hectic day of it. There was music, dancing, speeches (many, many, many speeches!), ongoing tours of the Centre, food for everyone, drinks, video shows, drama from a local theatre group, singing from school children....and an enormously long queue of people who wanted to go up the tower!

We had finished painting the Education Centre so it was ready for action (doesn't it look Amagezing!)....

We invited people from the communities of Kyabirwa, Ivunamba, Buwenda and Bujagali - and they turned out en masse and were so excited by the project it really was worth all the effort. I have personally never been hugged by so many old African women in one day! We also learnt a lot from the day as the community told us what kinds of educational programmes would be most beneficial to them...so now we can start looking into how the Centre can meet the needs of the communities around us. But mostly we had a lot of fun...as you will see!

There were plenty of young folks enjoying themselves........and some older folks, too (these women had just travelled up the spiral staircase, they were very chuffed with themselves!)We had some fantastic entertainment from school groups. These are pupils from Kivibuka Primary School...Our cooking crew provided a feast of vegetables, meat and rice for each person in attendance - no small feat when you see the 'kitchen'!The community were extremely excited about the prospect of IT classes and there was a constant gaggle of people in the ICT room answering our questionnaires and signing up for classes! This is the sign for the ICT Dept. - there's no word for 'computer' in the local language here so people say "Kalimagezi", which translates to "The Machine That Knows Everything". But the highlight of the day for everyone was the staircase up to the tower. We ended up having to police this unexpected attraction - letting 20 people up for 5 minutes at a time. This was the queue that stretched as far as the eye could see!
...we didn't have enough time in the day for everyone to go up the stairs but these were some of the lucky ones who made it! Everyone enjoyed the view from the top!But the day had to come to an end! Here we have Venus (Administrator), Herbert (Agriculture) and Robert (Theatre) performing the final task of the day - delivering the hired chairs and tables back to town. They look pretty exhausted, but still smiling!


Our next Community Day is planned for 2012. Should be about enough time for us all to recover!