Makong’onda Idol was such a huge hit we decided that a repeat performance was surely necessary. Because of some of the technical difficulties that made the last time difficult, we decided to make this time easier by limiting the dietary selections (only rice and beans for EVERYONE), by asking more volunteers to participate (JB, Kristy, Luke, Gigi, and Atif came), and by having another school come to join in the festivities (Newala Day, Gigi’s School). It was so well planned, and we had already done another PIMA day in Chikoropola that was a huge success, what could possibly cause any problems?
AFRICA.
To make this into a shorter story that highlights all of the main points, I have decided to make this blog into two categories, the things that went right, and the things that went wrong (again, all fault for any problems goes to AFRICA). To preface both categories, you must understand that in fact, the day was A LOT of fun, just chaotic, but no party/event in Tanzania would be considered an event without a little chaos.
THE THINGS THAT WENT WRONG
(what doesn’t kill you…)
• The district of Masasi ran out of tests to use to test HIV/AIDS. They told us this the Saturday before the event. Luckily, one of the doctors that we use to test was more than happy to get tests for us…if we gave him a huge amount of money. Luckily, Luke and I used our “shady doctor” smarts and waited out the tests, which arrived the day after the doctor said he would go get them.
• The music that we hired blew their transformer, and told Mustapha the day before the event that they couldn’t come. Mustapha called me after finding the new music (smart boy…he knows I panic too easily) which he had to search for 4 hours by biking around the Newala plateau to find.
• Gigi and her kids took off from Newala at 7:30 am in order to roll into Makong’onda around 9. They arrived at 2:30pm. The car they threw a gear, and they sat on the side of the road waiting for a part for 2.5 hours before they finally made it. Because of the wait, they missed the theatre and big races, but they did make it for netball.
• The Makong’onda Day students did not receive a time to come to the school, and thus didn’t show up until around noon: if the Newala day kids HAD arrived on time they would have been doing all of the races by themselves (there were plenty of students by the time the ND kids arrived, so it wasn’t a problem).
• During the soccer game (the last event of the day) the Makong’onda teacher playing with the students decided that he didn’t like one of the calls the ref made, and solved the problem by grabbing the ref by the neck and throwing him to the ground, starting a riot that Luke and I had to help break up. We broke it up, so it wasn’t a huge issue, but it was a bad example for all of the students who were watching.
THE THINGS THAT WENT RIGHT
• All of the food was cooked the day before and was ready to roll. We had no issues, with the exception that there weren’t enough plates (Gigi’s kids had forgotten) and so we found any clean flat surface that would hold mountains of rice and beans to serve to people.
• JB’s 5K went extremely well, with 5 of her children legitimately beating her at the race, and 25 more children following close behind. The first three finishers all won a pencil set, and the rest of the children scored notebooks and pens to use during school – EVERYONE was a happy winner
• All of the relay races went well, and with the exception of the condom station, most of the kids ran and finished fast
• Netball was done without any fights this year, not that there was a lot of peace and love on the field, but all of the fights were broken up before they began (this happened mostly because I threatened to kick out all of the girls from my team when they cheated – then I had to yell the same thing at the Newala team).
• The Dancing Contest was a huge hit, thanks to the awesome prizes sent to me by my parents. We had students dance first for school supplies. Then our daring judges (Atif and Luke) held up the coveted prize – The American paring knife. We called for village mamas to come into the circle, one mama almost took down our makeshit fence to get into the center ring, and one “grandmother” got into the middle and shook it – winning the prize (nearly starting a fight with the other mamas). The little girls that we called into the ring started dancing, and THE CROWD WENT WILD. If you look at the picture you can see JB, Atif, and Luke all dying laughing. Boys danced into the ring along with mamas and students to give the young ladies “gift money” for dancing, it was ridiculous.
• All of the kids from the conferences got up and gave speeches to the crowd about what they learned at the Peace Corps conferences. The boys talked about what they learned in Ndanda with Lindsey and Laura and the girls did their women’s day skit again. The crowd enjoyed the speeches and afterwards many new kids came up to me and asked when they would be allowed to sign up to go to conferences this year…
• Halfway through one of the performances the crowd cleared out of the tent area, and two men started swinging heavy sticks into the crowd. At first we were terrified a fight was breaking out, until we heard “SNAKE! SNAAAAAAAAAAKE!” Immediately all of the kids ran out from under the tent, only to get close enough to see the men start to pound it, shrieking and running away every time the snake got away and inched closer to the crowd. Fortunatly, the men with the drums beat the snake into oblivion with one of the drums (there were two people killed in our ward this year from snake bites…hence the panic) and JB and I led a dance party to get the crowd back into their seats. IT WAS RIDICULOUS.
Overall, the day went extremely well. There were some kinks, but as you can see, the good greatly outnumbered the bad. We ended up testing 200 people for HIV, and performing for probably more than half of the village (500ish people) including the youth who came to watch the performances. Overall it was a very successful, educational, and chaotic day. A great way to end the “Pima Parade” in the Mnaviera ward!
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