A Saturday night like no other

Its been all go this week and we’ve been 3 nights in a row! Last night we went to what had been billed as a ‘Martial Arts and Acrobatics Display’ in one of the lecture halls at the College. One of the part-time tutors who teaches ethics was involved so we thought we’d go along to show some support. The poster said from 7pm, so at about quarter to, I said to Ali that we should get a wiggle on and get down there – well, as it turns out, we needn’t have rushed! At 8.15 they were still fiddling about with the sound system that was so loud I could feel the bass thumping in my chest. While we were waiting were treated to some music videos from some Malawian TV Channel which were pretty dire but well received by everyone else who’d turned up – lots of our nursing students who were probably fairly dismayed that we were there, ruining their chances of having a good bop to the tunes. Eventually three chaps in judo kit popped out and did some forward rolls, a couple of back flips and twisty things and then disappeared again. Then some younger kids took to the floor and did some dancing that was a cross between Riverdance and Michael Jackson – one of them moved his legs and arms all over the place, so fast that he looked like he might be plugged into the mains!

The leader of the Judo Boys then came back out with a stick in his hand and in some rapid Chichewa, that I didn’t understand, explained to everyone else what he was about to do. He laid the stick on the floor, bent down, held onto his big toes and hopped over the stick, landing neatly on the other side, still holding his toes! Odd! It must be a lot harder than it sounds because he asked people to come up and give it a go and most of them wobbled about and fell over.

The rest of the display was no less bizarre, they’d come out, do something, disappear for a while, pop out again to do something else and then go back behind the wall. Every now and then, the Leader would nip out, do a forwards roll across to the DJ Chap, get the music changed and then rejoin the other two backstage. After about an hour they started doing some human climbing frame stuff - the Leader guy was always on the bottom and looked very strong. A little while later he started doing some martial arts moves and actually looked like he might be able to kill you. After a good 2 hours, we bailed out and giggled all the way home – sometimes its all very surreal out here sometimes…