Africa! The Musical: Success Holiday

Good morning/evening/day to you all! I know I just wrote a whole bunch, but things seem to just keep happening. Funny how that works. This morning was "Success Holiday," the last day of summer school for Fadi and a combination party/game/competition day, which we had been invited to by the school director when we visited Fadi's class before, got in trouble, and were sent to the principal's office.

Anyway, the day usually starts at 8, but it's Cameroon, so we walked down there at about 8:45. For another hour or so we sat with the rest of the kids, all ages, in desks put out on the field and watched them setting up a sound system to play loud, static-y Cameroonian pop music and the Titanic theme song... over and over and over... Eventually the teachers arrived and the day began, between 9:30 and 10. After a prayer and an introduction, we watched them have a timed math competition, with two teams trying to come up with the right answer first. After that was English, Chemistry, and a debate about why kids should go to holiday classes/summer school. Interspersed among the competitions were dance demonstrations by groups of boys or girls. Then came the decision of who was to be crowned "Mr. and Miss Success Holiday," basically the Cameroonian version of Prom king and queen.

It was quite different than any kind of crowning I've seen before, however. The two team, Cam A and Cam B, each chose a boy and a girl, who came out in turns wearing first traditional dress, then "party dress," then street clothes. They paraded across the front and back, to the cheers of their respective teams. I never found out who won, though... either they never announced it, or I couldn't hear it over the chatter of the kids, who mostly ignored whatever the director was saying over the microphone. I was rather surprised by the lack of respect they showed, with their friends on game day, as opposed to the quiet, attentive atmospheres of the classrooms during a lesson.

When we left, around 1 o'clock, the games were still going on; a food-eating contest, with spaghetti and chopsticks, and an arm-wrestling match, which they seemed to take very seriously. It was definitely the cultural experience, I can tell you that! Here are some pictures of today, plus a few more of the porch. The sunshine in the middle of the storm yesterday, and the mist this morning was so lovely I couldn't resist.