Monday, July 21, 2008

Music Video

I got a great welcome back from all of the kids and house moms on the property when I returned from my week at Sanyu. I love living in community here – people are interested in everything that is going on, and are constantly checking in on how things are going. Pretty much every time I leave the property, even if it is just to go to the market to buy vegetables, someone wishes me a “safe journey”, and when I return everyone I see welcomes me back. I think this is something that I will miss when I return to Canada!

I spent most of last Saturday hanging out with the kids, and then at 5pm tons of people started showing up on the property. I asked what was going on, and they told me that we were going to watch some music videos in the church!

Let me backtrack a bit…when I first arrived in Mpigi, the church was being used constantly – people were singing and dancing in the church building all the time. I found out that one of the musicians from the church had written some songs and was making them into music videos. So one Monday, a producer and cameraman from Kampala came to Mpigi to film the music video. The church was packed, people were in costumes, they were dancing and singing, and trying (unsuccessfully) to convince me to dance in the video!

So last Saturday we had a chance to watch the completed videos! Everyone showed up at 5pm, and we were waiting…and waiting…and waiting…at 6:30pm we all moved in to the church to wait some more. People weren’t impatient…instead, they used the time that we were all waiting to start up an impromptu dance party! There was one little guy who was probably 4 or 5, and he was the star of the show…probably one of the better dancers I have seen in a long time! Finally, at about 8:30pm, the video arrived with the producer from Kampala and the show began!

It was great to see so many of the church community members in the videos…and whenever one of them appeared, the whole crowd of about 120 people started cheering! The videos were great…totally done Ugandan style, which is hard to explain in a blog post, but I am hoping to be able to get a copy of the DVD to bring with me back to Canada!

Music videos in Uganda…an unexpected but very fun evening!!
Here's a picture of Segawa picking up the dry laundry...

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