Rebecca Beran

Happy Youth Day!

Today is a Cameroonian national holiday - Youth Day! So, it is treated like a Sunday at Mbingo Hospital, with minimal rounds and no outpatient clinic. Which left me free to attend the Youth Day celebration in town. I will upload my pictures today and add them to this post a bit later. All the schools in the area (Mbingo, Mbingo 2, Belo, Baicham, Fumban… ) were there, and all the kids lined up by school and marched in front of the VIPs.  Then each school had a choir come forward and sing about 3 songs. Then each school had representatives do a dance (again, about 3 dances). It was about 4 hours from when it started to when they broke for lunch, at which time I headed back to the hospital. There’s still a soccer game and some more activities after lunch. Seems that youth day is an opportunity to encourage the youth toward patriotism, participation in development, to stand against smoking, alcohol, fornication, and corruption, and the like, as this was the content of most of the songs (from what I could understand). When the kids did a particularly good job singing or dancing, members of the audience showed their support by walking into their midst and dropping money on the ground (which then someone collected at the end of each schools’ turn). I was introduced to this practice by Kristen, as she was  describing the Nigerian concert she attended in Chicago, so I was thinking of Kristen and Hammed today… By the middle schedule, the sun was beating down pretty powerfully, and I was impressed at all these kids dancing and singing so energetically after they’d been standing for so many hours. I think I’m going to take a nap…