Sunday, June 15, 2008

Holiday

Monday was African Children’s Day, marking the date schoolchildren were gunned down in Soweto in the 1970s. Kids had the day off school and the Chadiza Basic School hosted a ceremony with Nyau dancing, poems, drumming, and two skinny Zambian teenagers in oversized sorority t-shirts lip-synching to rap music.
Since the head teacher told me the event started at 9 am, I showed up around noon. I was standing in the back of a crowd about five deep. Within less than five minutes, Sister Jeanette found me and led me through the crowd to a seat at the lace-covered head table, where I commenced to attract far more attention from the hundreds of spectators than the excellent choir performing a song about HIV prevention.
I had hoped to sneak away, but instead sat through about two hours of performances, such as girls around six years old doing what appeared to be a fertility dance and a dramatic poem that included a character dressed as death, dripping fake blood and reminding the audience repeatedly that condoms are not 100 percent effective.
Afterwards, the head teacher invited me to the lunch with the honored guests, where the offerings included goat, chicken and offals, plus nshima dispensed out of a (presumably clean) garbage can.
I took Tuesday off.

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