Crashing a Cultural Soirée

Friday night we had our dinner with the neighborhood kids. We made them breakfast for dinner- French toast and eggs- and we all enjoyed ourselves. After eating, the kids decided Yoko and I should learn some traditional dance moves. Little did we know we'd be using them later that night. 

We ended up crashing a soirée and became guests of honor.  It was our first taste of a West-Cameroonian party. 

The kids left our house around 8pm. Around 9pm we started to hear loud music coming from up the hill. A few minutes later, we got a knock on the window. It was the kids inviting us to come watch them dance. We finished cleaning up, then headed uphill. When we arrived chairs were set up in rows in front of this stage and people were talking. We quietly slipped into the back, but were spotted by a neighbor.  Everything stopped, an audience member escorted to the very first row, and the MC introduced us as the celebrities from Washington and Lee.

Then the festivities continued. We learned it was not a dance thing as we had expected. In fact, it was a cultural soirée with several different performances. It actually was the first night of two celebrating the local radio station's 16th anniversary (the same station where we did our radio show!). What we expected to last 20-30 minutes turned into a 2 hour and 30 minute affair!

The evening, full of surprises, went a little like this:

• The typical opening with a Muslim and a Christian prayer
• A play done by a neighborhood group (note, this took place completely in Bamoun, the local language. We were totally lost! Fortunately the MC came over to us in the middle and explained the basic plot, though it was hard to hear her! Apparently someone was an old king and there was some kind of dispute over plantation land. Someone lied to the king, and ended up being executed in the end.)

Fuzzy photo of the play

• An elderly woman singing a song
• Finally, our neighbor kids doing traditional percussion and dancing!!! They were magnificent. See the video below.
• Then seemingly random but perhaps important people choosing songs, going up onstage, and singing and swaying to the music

As this song choice went on, it seemed like random people were going and dancing up on the stage with the song choosers. We were really in the mood to dance, and we caught a glimpse of our neighbor kids dancing to the side of the stage. We decided to go over, tell them good job, and dance with them!

It was slightly awkward to get up since we were sitting in the very front, but a lot of other people were getting up too. However, we didn't manage to slip over unseen. After dancing with the kids for one song, several adults came to get us.

They led us onto the stage and had us show off our dance moves! We obliged, then sat down at the end of the song. As the next song started, we were swaying to the music and some more adults came and pulled us back onto the stage! We danced again.

Third time's the charm- we finally learned to go to the stage on our own. We realized a lot of people were just dancing up to the stage whenever they liked a song.

After a few more songs, it was well past 11 and we wanted to get home. We didn't want to insult anyone by leaving too early- particularly after we had been made guests of honor, but we were exhausted and hungry- clearly, we were not prepared for a two and a half hour program! Fortunately for us, the music actually stopped for a bit. Several people were reading some poetry. After the poetry was finished, two others in the front got up to leave, and we dashed out after them.

The soirée continued until around 2am (we could hear it from our house). 

From accidentally crashing a cultural soirée, to being introduced and given seats at the front, to watching a play we barely comprehended, to watching our neighbor kids perform traditional dance, to being pulled up on stage to dance ourselves, we certainly had a night full of surprises. We're glad the kids prepped us (at least a little bit) with the appropriate dance moves ahead of time.

As it turns out, the kids' seemingly casual invite became a crazy, unpredictable, super fun, night. 

Enjoy this video of them performing their dance: