Today was the jubilee celebration for the monastery. Three monks made their final vows, which was nice. The food was spectacular, which is great now. But tomorrow when everyone leaves and we go back to boiled cornstarch and gumbo I am not gonna be a happy camper.
As promised there were a ton of people here, and as shocking as it is most of them only came for the free “concert” that followed lunch. The concert was actually pretty cool all things considered. Concerts here consist of the lead singer having a sing-a-long with their own CD, which is being blasted through two speakers that were shipped special delivery from a vintage 1970’s Woodstock concert. But they worked, which is more than I can say for a lot of things here. There were four singers in all, one of whom I have already referred to in this blog. While her table manners still need a little work, she is much more down to earth than I initially gave her credit for.
Before the concert even got started there was a ton of commotion and a lot of it was centered around my camera. I have more pictures than I care to look at right now of kids posing and doing goofy things. Even the adults were trying to get my attention. If you ever need a conversation starter, try explaining the difference between a film camera and a digital camera to someone who has never seen yet alone used anything more technologically advanced than a lightbulb. And when I wasn’t getting pulled in every which direction by a group of kids/adults who wanted their pictures taken, I was being heckled by the older girls in mine and Colin’s class to go and dance. As it turns out, I was the only one of any of them who ended up dancing.
If you are ever in a situation where you are the only thing not like any of the others and you are surrounded by a group of children, don’t shake hands with a snap of the finger with one of them and expect to not have to do it with all 25 of the others.
After listening to the music for a little while and laughing at some of the Germans/Austrians trying to dance, I figured that it was my turn to go and make a fool out of myself. Basically, the dance that I did is one that young girls perform as their final initiation before being able to be married – it’s not to hard to see why they perform this dance either. All you do is alternate lifting your feet and stomping the ground to the rhythm of the music or clapping while at the same time slapping your ass to the same beat. I felt like a penguin on epinephrine. Not only that, but I was wearing my very vibrant Togolese pants…make that an out of place penguin on steroids. It didn’t matter, I had a blast! And the crowd loved it, especially my students who will probably have a whole line of jokes ready to go tomorrow morning. Luckily for you there were enough cameras and phones about that I managed to get a few pictures of myself. I will put them up so long as I have no superenlarged photos of me dancing hanging in my room when I come home.
Just in case you were wondering there is no such thing as any man whatsoever dancing with the cute little girl in Africa like in all of the older Hollywood movies. BIG Cultural Taboo here.
As things were winding down, I spied Colin talking to a friend of the monastery and his sister. They are college students in Kara and want us to go in and hang out with them. Finally, peers! Next step…night clubbing.
The afterparty was fairly exciting as well… I was messing around with some kids and picked one of them up, spun him around, and managed to explode the grape drink packet he had in his pocket. 1 pair of pants injured in action for the night. Later at dinner, after I had showered and gotten cleaned up wearing a newly washed pair of pants; I was on the receiving end of a tray full of beer. The nun who was serving my table (the one with all the Germans hence the beer) hadn’t had much practice at lowering a tray full of drinks in her line of work. 2 pairs of pants injured in action within 30 minutes of each other. I also got a nice lesson in leaving died cotton clothing in a bucket full of soapy water with white and non-died clothes. I think I got most of the blueish green tint out of my shirt and boxers. If not, my new Sunday best is going to be Togolese pants and a tie-dyed t-shirt.
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