Spirit of Uganda

Today, we had one of our many all school field trips. We had to take a large school bus, a mini school bus, and an air bus. No joke. We went to the Arlington Theater to see the Spirit of Uganda. It's part of the Empower African Children project. The children who performed either lost one or both parents to AIDS. Overall, I thought the show was wonderful. The drummers were amazing. I can't imagine drumming as quickly as they did for as long as they did. There was a part when the storyteller had all the kids standing up and dancing. It was so endearing seeing all these children jamming to African rhythms.


Even though the show was great, I thought their could be some improvements. I don't think the board members or whoever should go through the "Thank You to so and so organization" speech at the beginning of the show, especially when the number of children outnumber the number of adults. I don't think the board member of the Empower African Children Organization should go into the "This is what happens when you invest time and effort into a child" speech when everyone in the audience is either a teacher or a student. Firstly, that's what teachers do every day. Secondly, what does that mean to the kids?

As for the show itself, I only have two major gripes. I thought there were too many "courtship" dances with a bunch of gyrating. The narrator even went into detail about how if the person couldn't dance well enough and didn't find a mate then he/she would be single forever. How is that relevant to kids? I thought they should have explained the significance of the dances before the dance instead of after.