Country Day

Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Today our day started with the breakfast club, everyone came down at the same time. Will miracles never cease!

Today is the day we visited the Cyprian Ekwensi Centre for Arts and Culture. We boarded government school buses for the ride to the center, located about 10 minutes from the hotel. The building seems to be an old tired building that is struggling to make ends meet while trying to provide a center for the preservation of Nigerian history. The lighting was dim and the cases old, not unlike many struggling small museums in the US. 

After we toured the museum we set up our “country tables”. Each country’s team had a table where products, or foods, or crafts were displayed and shared with all the participants. Each country also dressed according to their culture. After we all had a chance to visit the tables, ask questions and share cultural information we then took our seats for the program. 

The program consisted of each team doing a short presentation about their country and their community including political structure, cultural icons, music, dance, etc. and then doing a short dance or song that was representative of their country or community. A significant point to our presentation was the cultural diversity and the immigrant foundation of the United States. We each made sashes or belts or necklaces with ribbon and strung them individually with all the flags from our countries of heritage, introduced ourselves individually and explained our flags. All of the country presentations were so interesting and the colorful clothing of many of the countries lit up the hall where we were meeting. It was a good thing something was bright because the hall was dim, the stage was huge and deep and it was difficult to see or photograph the dancing. So sorry that we do not have any good pictures to share. As a conclusion, a professional Nigerian dance troupe including drums did an amazing performance. The entire hall came alive. It was exciting, vibrant and wonderful. Everyone cheered them on and we were sorry when it ended. That is saying something about how good they were because until then we were beginning to fade and suffer from sitting in chairs too long. We boarded buses and returned to the hotel for lunch. This was about 3:00pm. We are beginning to understand about Nigerian meal time and we now pack snacks where ever we go.

The last team that is going to arrive came in today which is South Africa. Unfortunately due to a number of Visa and financial problems, several of the original teams confirmed to attend dropped out in the last 2-3 days including the Ukraine and China. Even the New York team was only cleared with their visas the day before their plane departure. We were really lucky because we didn’t have any problems at all and had all our documents in plenty of time.

After lunch our team began practicing before we were to go the judges briefing and to watch the 2nd place national teams compete for the one slot to compete with the first place teams tomorrow. After we were ready to go back downstairs, we found out that tonight’s event is postponed until tomorrow. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of explanation and we are discovering that in Nigeria you just have to go with the flow or you become very frustrated. 

We almost had brief moment of thinking we were going to go out to the Sheraton Hotel for hamburgers or spaghetti or French fries but we had to abandon that plan when the bus was called away to pick up a group at the airport. Oh well, it sounded wonderful but we knew it was going to be expensive so it probably worked out for the better though we are still keeping it in mind for the weekend.

We were also disappointed today to find out that our trip on Saturday to the Yankori National Park has been canceled and replaced with a tour of Abuja attractions. It’s not that we don’t want to see Abuja sites but we were planning on doing that with Benedette’s brother on Sunday. Apparently after “Nigerian discussion” it was determined that it was too far to drive to the park and get there in time to see the wildlife before they retreated into shade to escape the heat. This is apparently not a good time of year also because many of the animals have moved to other locations for the summer season. It was a disappointment but we are excited to learn that our contact at the US Embassy has arranged a special tour/event for us at the embassy on Monday. On Monday we may also be visiting a government school just outside Abuja. This is the same school with a SAGE team that we had communicated with by email and that we met in the lobby of the hotel on our first morning. Both of our teams are trying to find a way to partner on a major project together next year.

After dinner at the hotel, we again started preparations and rehearsal for competition tomorrow. We changed many of our slides and dialogue, rehearsed, and rehearsed and rehearsed and timed and timed and timed ourselves over and over (as soon as our time is up we’re cut off even if we are not done). Alberto and Mrs. Jones were down in the lobby searching for new images to add to our PowerPoint. We need to tweak some of our slides and dialogue to bring in a more international perspective to the work we have done. When we are in the United States competing with other US teams it’s ok to be more local but in an international event we need to be sure our global perspective is clear to all.

We are all beginning to fade with some of us taking cat naps between our speeches or while the slide is tweaked. Pretty amazing to see us all sprawled over the floor and bed seeming to be pretty well conked out but when it’s each person’s turn to do “their thing” up they jump and dive right in. You can really tell we are a team because we really help each other and keep each person motivated. 

Tomorrow is a big day. Goodnight to all.

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