Drums and Dancing, Just Not By Us.

(Blog chronology clarification: The dates on these blogs are kind of messed up; i.e. duplicated, etc. It’s because the time we do the stuff and the time the blog gets published are not the same day. At least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. “Who GARaH”, you say? “Just get on with it”, you say? (Uh, if you don’t know what WhoGARaH means, ask your kid later. If they had a class from me they should now). So I will get on with it. But just in case you’re trying to follow the itinerary closely, these blogs may not match up. Hey, we’re on an intense study tour in South Africa, we can’t be bothered by date and time.) The other problem is internet access is limiting, so that puts us behind on our reporting. But what the heck, you get something every once in awhile so at least you know we’re OK. (Unless someone hijacked us and are blogging in my place while our entire group is being sent to clean bathrooms in Siberia. But what are the chances of that? Nyet good!)

On Saturday night we went to the Gold Restaurant in Cape Town. They have traditional African food and music. It’s about a 2-hour meal. Of course, I’m nervous because if there’s some chance of participation that involves dancing I go comatose. But the food was excellent! (I find that many foods here do not look so good on the plate, but when you taste them they are very good. That’s been a pleasant surprise). Some young men danced and drummed around the tables. And when I say danced, it’s not a slow Texas 2-step kind of deal. I’d say more like your hyper-est friend after a double espresso, liter of MtDew and a gram of RedBull in powder form. Yeah, smoking fast arms and legs while the bongo drummers are wailing away on their drums. It was good and fun. And then there was a big muppet animal that moved towards our table. Bailey didn’t know what to do so she gave his nose some scratches. Like a cat. Although it didn’t really look like a cat, so it suddenly stood up and we could see about 3 ft. of a long man’s legs under the costume. (If you’re scared of clowns, you probably would have not liked this place). Vicky was selected from our group to do some dueling drums with one African drummer. He’d play “bonk-bonk-bonk!” Vicky would reply, “bonk-bonk-bonk” . So far so good. Then he came back with, “bonk-bonkity-bump-bump-bupbupbupbup-rakkatakkat tum!” (All in about 0.5 seconds) Vicky came back with, well, kind of a deer in the headlight look. Although she recovered and now I believe has decided to join their band as a roadie and groupie for their next tour. Don’t worry parents, the pay is lousy and the hours bad, but this will “build character”.

DrG