Another exhausting day, a crazy one actually.
We were supposed to have a group of young people from Goma come to visit us at Patronage today. We were going to have a big fiesta with them – they apparently had all kinds of stuff planned, like dances, songs, poems to recite to us, even acrobatics. And we did our best to throw together a little welcome show for them, including some beautiful traditional Rwandan dancing, some of our usual Animation songs that we always do at the beginning of Patronage, and some zumba.
Well, our kids arrived at 8am and we began Patronage as usual, with the expectation that our guests would arrive around 9:30 as had been previously discussed. Then, Sr. Charlotte received a call at 9:30 saying that they were still on the Congo side of the border, and that they've had a bit of trouble getting across. So we wait, we wait some more, we do our best to entertain the kids. The girls were all dressed in their traditional costumes, ready to dance, and the other kids were all ready to sing.
But we had no one to perform for. So we just goofed around for like an hour, we set up chairs for our visitors, we did some zumba-ing which was pretty cool, but by about 10:30 some of the Animators were really pooping out and were not able to keep the kids occupied. I taught some kids "stuck in the mud," and some other smaller games formed here and there. Normally Patronage only goes till 11am, and it was 11:30am and we still had no guests. But our guests were still at the border, planning on coming.
So, Sr. Charlotte told the kids that they should go home and eat lunch, then come back at 1pm. Again, another example of something that would only happen in Africa. I'm still pretty surprised that the Goma people didn't just turn around and go home when they first ran into trouble crossing. But, time is fluid here, so coming late isn't a problem! Oh and by the way, in the midst of all this I lost our spare key to the school office. Part of our downtime was spent sending all the kids out into the field to look for it. It is still MIA as I type this. I'm pretty tired when we head in for lunch, and we have to go back out there in about an hour! Eeegads! But sure enough, a smaller group of kids was clinging to the gate at 1pm. And fortunately by this time our guests had all arrived. They had packed their own lunches, so they were eating. So, I volunteered to go play with the kiddos in the field until they finished their meal (None of the animators were back yet). There were only about 20 kids, so I figured we could just play follow the leader or something.
But then Fabrice met up with us and started our usual animation as more kids trickled in. Also, some of my secondary school English class-ers showed up, not knowing that we would not have class today due to the delayed start of our party (no one knew that we wouldn't have class today!) But I told them they should stay and partake in our zumba performance of Chin Chin, which we have practiced after each English class. They did :)
It was spectacular.
What a show these Goma peeps put on! First of all, let me say that they were all at least 18 years old. In my opinion, this party was kind of awkward because all our Gisenyi kids are kids – we've got little ones who are 3 years old, all the way up to maybe 12. So they had a hard time paying attention to some of the poems and stuff that these older Goma teenagers were performing for us. Also, the Goma people spoke French in all their acts. That was nice for me, but none of the Gisenyi kids could understand them. So John and Fabrice had to on-the-spot translate. They were awesome and didn't complain at all, they just stepped up to the task at hand. I also thought our kids were a bit too young to sit through such a long showcase!
The Goma people were really great at cheering us on when we were performing something, and they would clap and support us very well. But our kids haven't quite grasped this concept yet, so many times I felt like they were being a bad audience by not showing their enthusiasm. Plus, they would just talk a lot and run around when they're supposed to be sitting down enjoying the show.
But what a show it was! The Goma people did a traditional Congolese dance, complete with leopard-skin dresses and face paint.
There was an Afro-hiphop group of guys who danced to some more modern/rapish yet very traditional sounding music. Their dancing was very "African" – (aka very pelvic) which is actually quite different from Rwandan dance, in which the wrists and arms are the focal point, as seen here in our girls' performance.
And there was another group of guys who did all kinds of gymnastics and unusual fight scenes and made human pyramids…crazy crazy crazy.
And they did a very weird "comedy" in which there was a guy wearing a skirt and a bikini top and a Santa Claus mask. I did not understand it at all.
As a whole group we danced around in a circle to a very popular song called "Give it to me some more," which I've heard and its got a really good beat. But the littlest kids were confused, and were mostly just walking in a circle.
I was asked to introduce myself to the Goma people, so I gave a brief intro in French and thanked them for their awesomeness. (p.s. – during our zumba performance a few of them got up and joined in. It rocked.)
After a few more closing remarks from Sr. Candide and some other Goma people, they left and we had to clean the place up and put the chairs away. They actually left a big mess from all their food . . . they brought large plastic pails with fish and rice, so there was grease and rice that needed to be swept up.
It was great, yet not properly age-matched, and pretty tiring. But I liked it.
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