We had an incredible experience this last weekend when we headed up to Mpumalanga to play a show at the Barnyard Theater in White River. It started with a 4.45am wake up on Friday to catch a 6am flight to Lanseria and then jump in a hired combi and navigate our way to White River. Lots of laughter and a few wrong turns but 5 hours later we got there!
I had spent the week in bed with flu, so was topping up on lemon & honey, gargling salt and praying my voice would meet us at the venue! Our show was kicked off by a dance company from Alexandria who took to the stage with township jives, gumboot dancing and beautiful choral singing. I stood at the back of the theatre with goosebumps and so thrilled to be there.
Saturday was meant to be a lazy day before we headed off to perform at the Hlau Hlau township school in the afternoon, but at 9am I got a call from Paul, the owner of the Barnyard, to say that 15 kids from the local orphanage had arrived at the theater at 7am instead of 7pm the night before! He asked if I could please go and at least give them a little chat to make up for the confusion, and so Nelson and I headed over to the theatre and sang 'Shine' to them.
It resulted with all of t
hem on stage with me singing "I'm gonna shine" over and over and improvising a full dance routine on the spot. I was overwhelmed! After that they treated us to an hour of dancing and singing and they even got me up and learning some dance moves (video to follow...) I spent the morning with tears streaming down my face - what an inspiration to know that there are iniatives out there to help kids who have so little and give them a much brighter future!
Saturday afternoon saw us heading into the local township and after an hour of getting hopelessly lost we finally arrived and started setting up on the stoep in the quad. There was one plug point to make it all happen - so it was a rather 'unplugged' gig! While we were getting sorted the dancers & singers starting doing their thing and the crowd went mad. It was incredible to feel the spontaneous joy erupting in the fading afternoon light as hundreds of people streamed in to enjoy the show.
We were last on and I got to play the 'I CAN' game with a couple hundred people screaming 'I CAN' to questions like 'who can be the best they can be?'. It was awesome! 'Shine' and 'Take You Back' were all we had time for before night fell, but it still resulted in us being mobbed by hundreds of kids and the guys must have jammed 'Take You Back' for a good 15 minutes. It was MIND BLOWING!!!
So, here we are back in CT and very inspired about this amazing country and the energy that flows here. I am committed to us spending more time in communities that need uplifting as we gained as much as we gave - what a priviledge!
