Culture Day

About 4 months ago, one of the office staff here was complaining that the timetable didn't work out for the end of term 2 because of the public holiday on the 8th of the 8th. We had an extra day after all exams would be finished and Gemma had said only one Funday per year instead of the usual each term. So, off hand I said, "lets have a music festival day!" She said ok but ask Gemma. Gemma said, ok if you want to organise it then whatever. I said ok.
Over that first week I had so many ideas and thought and rethought through the whole thing and decided that to get all 700 children and all teachers involved it would have to be more than just music. So it became Culture Day... celebrating East African culture in many ways. I was asked to explain it at the very next staff meeting and there were so many questions, doubts, misunderstandings and disinterest.
I nearly gave up then.
So, since then I have been organising everyone for this big day. I assigned at least one Tanzanian teacher to each group and then us foreigners as assistants.
The activities the teachers chose to teacher were a great variety:
Chapatti cooking
Masai Beading
Weaving
Pottery
Traditional Poetry
Dancing
Singing
Drumming
Bao game
Drafts
Instrument making
Cultural Costume wearing

My plan was to split all the children up into different age groups and mix classes etc for a better experience... it was also my plan to have the children choose the activity they were to be in (giving them limited options of course). Everyone thought both of those ideas were terrible. Both ideas worked well however ( there were a few problems when the homeroom teachers of the youngest classes did not tell their children where to go and I had to escort many individually).
I asked each teacher to tell me their requirements for their activity and then tried to get permission to purchase or find it all.
I also wanted to invite a professional African dance and drumming group to school to perform to end the Culture Day afternoon... I found the group, went to hear them and got them for half price. An orphanage/school contacted me and wanted to come and perform and join in... they came, sang a song about HIV (the reason for most of the orphans) and joined in too.
I hardly slept the night before, I was recalling all the doubts and negative comments for Gemma and other teachers and the complete lack of faith they all had in me to be able to organise anything.
I spent the day running around the school making sure everything ran smoothly.
I had chosen 44 of the most musical, rhythmic children in the school to join the professionals for a special workshop and they were fantastic!

EVERYTHING WAS A SUCCESS!!!

The groups that taught something that could be performed had their moment on stage and then the professionals gave us an awesome show at the end, with the last 5 minutes inviting the teachers to dance up on stage!
I was completely exhausted as everything/everyone had relied on me for everything. I think I even surprised myself (I definitely surprised Gemma)!