Highschool musical 800,000 times better

Hello again. I would like to share some more stories.

So as I have mentioned the compound that I live on houses many children and teenagers. About 15 of them. Of the teenagers, there is one girl I feel especially close to and her name is Beryl (Bur-ill). She is really funny, and really fiesty. She doesn;t take crap from anyone and beats up all the boys. She is really happy too, and always singing. Usually after dinner she dominates the singing, along with another teen, Steven. Steven is always dancing, and when dear MJ passed, he had a really rough time because he didn't know who his idol was going to be anymore in terms of dancing.

Anyways both Steven and Beryl are in their highschool choir, consisting of about 40 kids. Last month they went to a district competition and won, so they were off to the provincial finals being held in Kisii (about 4 hours from Ugunja).The provincial finals were held this weekend, and I expressed my desire to go to both Beryl and Steven, and asked them to ask their choir director if I could come. But like most African things, nothing ever runs on time, and they ended up not asking.

So on Saturday I walked to the highschool (a good half hour) to talk to the choir director. The highschool by the way is so beautiful, it looks like a resort. Palm trees and exotic flowers and thatched gazebos everywhere. So nice!
Anyways I talked with the director and he said I could come, we just had to sort out how I was getting there. The students were sleeping over at the highschool that night because they had to leave at 4am. So...I was thinking "ok, sleep on the floor of the highschool and wake up at 3am"....SOUNDS GREAT!

So, I pack some things, and walk to the highschool with Beryl and Steven. Beryl tells me the other students are so excited a white person is travelling with them. I was pretty excited myself! So we get there, and I am introduced to a bunch of students. When the sun went down the kids were busy making dinner, while others set up their sleeping stuff on the floor. Then some speakers were brought out along with a small television, and music started. And let me tell you, when music starts around 40 highschool students who love singing, you DO NOT want to be in the way. It was crazy, everyone was going insane with joy.

Then after dinner they put on this "movie". Haha...I put movie in brackets because movies here are NOT like movies back home. Movies here look like they were recorded on a digital camera by some first-year cameraman student. Movies here are a mix between the cheesiest soap opera you know and the worst musical video you have ever seen. With that being said, movies here are the most hilarious things I have ever seen. The plot was that a man was falling in love with a blind woman. My favourite part came when they were eating ice cream and she said in her best English accent " Why do you love me? I am blind", and he replies with, "We are all blind". Wow. It was fantastic!

Anyways, so after waking up at 2am with the rest of the students, I was pretty pumped. We go in the bus, which is like a really crappy version of a coach bus, at 4am, and drove on! I got to see the sunset around 6am which was pretty cool. A fiery orange ball rising from the green grassy hills past Kisumu. If you think of how an African sunrise should look in your head, that is pretty much how it looked.

We rolled into Kisii around 830. The provincial finals were being held at this huge mixed highschool, and all the buses were parked in this enormous feild. By 930am most schools had arrived and some were rehearsing in the feild. Never have I seen so many black students in one location. It was a sea of people, and like always, I was the only whitey.

So the students performed around 10am, and I can't describe how they sounded because it wouldn't do them justice. I had thought that being in the gospel choir and singing that music was the best music I had ever heard, and ever sung. It is so full of energy and happiness. However, I have to say, the Kenyan highschoolers were 100 times better. You just can't beat it, and you can't replicate it. They sounded so great, I was smiling the whole song.

They only had that one song to sing (the competition lasted 3 days with each school getting to perform 2 songs a day, but the students in Ugunja only had enough funding to go for the one day). Anyways, the rest of the day the students just had a good time. It is rare for them to leave home and be around so many other students, so they were loving it, and I was so happy I went.

The coolest thing I saw, apart from them singing, was a boys school performing a traditional Luo dance. They were all decked out in paint and feathers and grass skirts. They had bongos and a horn and a traingle. It was the most amazing dancing I have seen, and it was so genuine, you could tell that each move was part of who they were.

So...we left Kisii at 430pm, and I was so tired. But, the bus being as rickety as it was, and the roads being...well...Kenyan...I couldn't really sleep the whole ride home. But I did get to see the sunset, which was very nice. So overall, Kisii was great, I am so glad I went and had the opportunity to go.