A Crash Course in Traditional Culture

On Saturday we went to a village where a ‘famous’ group of musicians lived. We sat in a big semi-circle on plastic chairs and they made a great entrance by entering from 3 corners of the field we were in – a new surround sound experience. Their music sounded a bit like that of a very collectivist community, whereby they all played their respective at once, at the expense of any kind of tune. If I were a less respectful and cultured individual I might be tempted to use the word ‘cocoffany’, but alas I can’t spell it.

As the ‘chief’ of the group I was required to come up and do some African dancing. The trouble was that this particular community had a traditional dance involving a lot of hip shaking. They can move their hips amazingly, very fast, in every direction and I can only move hips as though they are attached to two legs and a back.

At the end I was called up again out of my plastic seat, this time to receive a gift on behalf of the group. I was given a little whistle, which looked like a recorder (until it’s taken out of the player’s mouth and then you can see it has no mouth piece) and is referred to as a flute. I courteously blew it and made no noise at all. 

Claude and the 20,000 Shilling Challenge

No month would be complete without a Claude update... All the volunteers were doing a ’20,000 shilling challenge’ last week as part of their training. They were given 20,000 shillings along with 24 hours and they had to pretend to be entrepreneurs, be innovative and make a profit. At the end of the challenge they must give back the 20k, but could keep the rest. The scenario that Claude's group were given was that they had to innovate a salon. They didn’t know the first thing about African beauty, not even what different hair styles were so they decided to make bracelets out of braided synthetic hair. Unsurprisingly they were having trouble selling this innovative new product. It’s particularly hard to do when you have only 12 hours and no shop front from which to sell from - all the volunteers went out on the streets to try and catch passers by. With time running out they needed a new sales strategy and so they approached a friendly music shop owner, who put on some tunes and the whole team started dancing. None more ferociously than Claude. A large crowd very quickly gathered to see the white people dancing (in fact I was passing on a motorbike and it was pointed out to my by my driver. Knowing that a white person causing a scene was likely to have something to do with my team, I ran over to see what was going on, swelling the ranks of onlookers further). The team used this opportunity to sell bracelets to the crowd, who struggled to comprehend that a white person would be dancing for business...They didn’t actually make a profit at the end of all this, but they made less of a loss than they would have otherwise made.