17.11.2018

17.11.2018 20 days at naankuse

Last day

This morning I had enclosure cleaning and feeding all the animals again.

After Lunch we had a short afternoon feed and then already started with the saturday activity. Because today it was led by the legend cornee and he had just two things on his mind: Men and dancing!

So the kitchen staff and the children from the nearby school would teach us their traditional dances and we then had to make our own inspired by them. So all the volunteers who were not too embarressed or too "cool" to dance got split into 2 groups and we started to dance.

Well we tried atleast their dance is definitly different from what we see on european music videos. The beat was given by clapping and they were really good at clapping at different speeds but they were a bit nervous aswell of course to just dance infront of us.

After an hour of learning we had to dress up african style and 3 groups of 7 were made. In the group we had to now make up our own dance with what they showed us and with what we now about european dances which wasnt much.

But we tried and discussed different dances and how we want to combine them and slowly our dance started to take shape.

We called ourselves team remix because we were using a lot of different songs and dance moves.

After a shower we met again with the other groups, the kitchen staff, the children, all the other volunteers that were too afraid to join but not to watch and a jury of staff.

Our team was choosen to start and so we did. Cornee asked for our name and we all screamed: REMIX!!! Then everyone got quiet and we made our move.

First we were sitting and then slowly raised while singing the beginning of the lion king. "Naaaaah t svenja hät keis pishema a...." We followed with a little walk dance while singing the next part that nobody knows "emunjama isimujama emutata lalala"

Now we were in a circle and held hand while turning to the right and singing "ana, dio, tria, teserra" which was greek for 1,2,3,4. Next we started clapping and saying "Na! Na! Naankuse!" And one person always made a few moves to it that we had learned from the kitchen staff. Then we sang a very short part from bad romance while we went back in a line "raw raw oh lalala, rama oh mama, raw raw omama düdüdü"

We finished with "we are family" while doing a short dance move that was in one beyonce song.

Everybody applauded and the next group team Cheeta went on stage(a piece of grass lawn).

They had no costumes but their faces were painted with black stripes. They were also singing and clapping and had a pretty strong synchronized ending.

Team waka waka were the last ones, they had good costumes and played the waka waka song while dancing to it with some moves we had learned.

The children school and the kitchen shool performed aswell. In the end we all got together with Cornee in the middle and he showed us his "very erotic" dance moves that we had to copy.

It was a fantastic evening and after a barbeque dinner the jury got ready to tell us the winner. In third place we had team chetaa, they were missing the really colorfull clothes and mostly did european dances instead of african. The winner was very close, getting not all of the judges votes enough to get to the first place was......team........

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REMIX!!!!!!

With team waka waka on second. So everybody cheered and our team won a round of free drinks.

The rest of the evening I talked to a lot of people switching from table to table while playing some games aswell. At one point Simon one of the volunteers came to me, half naked and dripping and told me to come join in the swimming pool with the rest that had way to many drinks, I told him I was fine here in the dry area but then he asked me: "Nick when are you in namibia the next time?" And he was right it was my last night at this amazing place and I did not know when I would return.

So I took off my shirt and jumped in. It was not as cold as expected but really cold when I got out of it. Luckily I still had my towels from the dress up dance.

At 1 in the morning I went to bed, though I woke up again when my roommate jesper came in and told me "hey nick look! I brought a friend!" And when I opened my eyes there was a donkey outside our door looking at me. I just laughed and quickly dozed off again while I heard jesper struggle with trying to push the donkeys head outside so that he could close the door.