The Offcial Opening

It has been a busy and tiring week so I apologise for the shortage of entries.

On Wednesday 17^th November we had the official inauguration of facilities at the health centre by the German Ambassador for Uganda Mr Klaus Dieter Duxmann. There was lots of manic preparation leading up to this as when I first came here on placement it was only planned that he would officially open the operating theatre. I suggested that may be we could include the new path lab as well so the work to get this to the stage where it was ready for the ceremony was considerable.

This is what the lab looked like 6 weeks ago.

After much hard work –  it was starting to take shape.

The day before the ceremony student nurses from the nursing school on site were recruited to help with the cleanup operation. Needless to say there was much laughter and shrieking when a large group of young women, a group of builders and quantities of water became involved!!  I think they all enjoyed it although they did work very hard.

Official Opening of the Laboratory and the Operating Theatre

The Ambassador is new to Uganda having only commenced the post 2 months ago. We all had dinner together the evening before the ceremony and it was really pleasant to meet such nice people who were very easy going. It was such a nice change as the dining tables in the guest house were set out in the garden and well all sat under the stars to eat.

I was nominated to be master of ceremonies for the day. The main purpose of this being to keep to the planned schedule as the Ambassador is not allowed to travel after dark for security reasons; so he needed to leave on time to be back in Kampala (a 4 hour drive) by about 6.30 pm. We were due to start at 10am and by 11am we had still not started as some of the key quests had not arrived. However as some people did not turn up I was able to pull back the timings.

I think many of the staff here were amazed that we finish only 20 minutes after the time on the programme. In Uganda presenters are well known for talking for long periods and for not starting on time. Meetings are often in ‘Uganda time’ which is at least 1 hour after the planned time. There is also a saying in Uganda that in “Europe they have clocks; but in Uganda they have time!”

I shared with the staff afterwards the event that the way I kept to time was to whisper to the presenters  how many minutes they were allocated as they came up to the microphone. They were all very good at roughly keeping to this. I was very touched at how many of the staff came up to me afterwards to thank me for helping with the preparations (even those I had to chase up) – it was quite humbling.  

One of the highlights of the day was the Mbale School Brass Band who played the national anthems for the ceremony.

They are a group of young musicians who have managed to get a collection of donated brass instruments and who practice whenever they can. They were absolutely fabulous in the atmosphere that they created. When the ceremony had finished they started playing some music with a really good beat, then they lined up and were directed and led by the security police towards the guest house where lunch had been prepared. The rest of the invited guests then fell in behind them dancing their way towards lunch – it was amazing and really made the day. 

The other highlight for me was the obvious delight of the staff in having the dignitaries to open the new facilities, they sang and danced and called out in true African style as they were walking around for the opening.