International Day

March 29, 2018

By Hector Gonzalez

March 30^th, 2018

It's International Day at Kampala International School, which (I have learned) people here take very seriously. Which is great, because it was a beautiful day for a parade, for fantastic food, a marching band, and celebrating all that is wonderful about this world. Plus, kids in costumes are always cute.

The highlight is the almost-Olympic-calibre Parade of Nations. Uganda, as host, led the way. Others followed. I tried to capture it all.

This is Belgium. The sign-bearer can't read, and thus didn't understand that his sign was backwards.

No sign for Belarus? That's okay, she'll improvise.

That's Democratic Republic of Congo. For some reason nobody calls it that. Just DRC is enough.

Ethiopia and Eritrea basically marched together, so I put them both this way.

We don't need a sign! We're India! We got this big flag!

Kenya, joined by a stray Japanese kid.

I don't know why, but Nepal cried through the whole parade.

Some blurry Dutch.

The entire Portuguese community went on vacation early (okay, it's just one family), so we skip right on to Russia.

South Korea had a sign, but they marched too close to the South Africans, so I couldn't get a picture of it. Here's a representative, though.

Sudan and Sweden got intermingled while marching, so here they are together.

Tajikistan and Tanzania also opted to march as a group.

The Brits were quite spread out, so they get two pictures.

Seriously, where did all these Americans come from? I know, like, two of them (besides my own).

And last but not least, Zimbabwe wraps it up.

But International Day is more than just a celebration of our beautiful world. It's also an excuse to eat way too much at nine in the morning. As per usual, the Asian tent really pulled out all the stops, but there was strong competition from Africa and the Middle East. The Americans mostly just provided desserts, and the Australians made only a half-hearted attempt to get folks to try vegemite. Europe did a fine job, though you could tell they really wished they could offer wine to go with it all.

Oh, and there are activities, too. Though mostly people just ate.

These are cane toad races, courtesy of the Oceania tent. And by the time these were done, we were full, slightly sunburned, and ready to go home for spring break.