Youth up for Peace

After my breakfast I went over to bomah grounds which is the ‘field’ (or maybe rather massive patch of dust with two goals and something resembling to a stage on it) on which the concert was to start in a couple of hours time.

The soundsystem had already arrived and music was blasting across the field. The boys from Uganda Breakdance Project were next to the ‘stage’ which was currently being fixed; when we got there there were no slats on the stage and there were about two hours to go to kick off – it is coming, it is coming – bole bole! It was great to see the boys all dancing away and getting ready for the show and there was generally a very good vibe around the place. The first people had started gathering under the trees that line the field, curiously watching what all the commotion was about.

the dj desk

Geraldine and I went to this small cooperative who were to organise the tents – really they had been entrusted with this task a couple of weeks before, but things here seem to work on a last minute basis and only if you are constantly making sure people do their jobs. So we got them to go to the place with the tents and a little while later the tents were delivered and set up on the grounds. By that time all the shadow from the trees was occupied by people and it is no surprise that the tents filled up as soon as they were up – it was a very hot day.

The event hadn’t started yet and suddenly the music stopped – no more diesel in the generator… luckily they managed to find some more diesel to get the thing going again and re-start the music. Would have been a bit shit to have a concert and then run out of power for the music before it even started… ;-))

and so after hours of fixing the stage, testing the sound equipment and the floor boards on which the boys were to be dancing the event officially started - it was an organic transition from people mucking about to slightly more organised chaos. there was a line up for and a timetable for the event but no one really followed it; the different groups performed their dances and in between the members of HEALS, BPU and other dance groups transmitted their messages of peace - encouraging young people to join dance groups and learn breakdancing. It was great to see the positive energy emanating from the groups and judging by the amount of people that were crowded around the stage people were enjoying the event.

As for the free sodas we decided in the end that it would cause a riot to give out free sodas to the crowd; there were more people than sodas and with the heat and the excitement it would not have been a good idea. so instead Oxfam brought a load of jerrycans full of water and we dished out water in plastic cups that we'd bought earlier. It was all going really well - people were being really calm - after all, water is not that exciting - and were all putting the cups back on the tables from which we were handing out the water.
Once the water was finished somehow people must have realised that we had originally been intending to give the cups away to them and within about 3 seconds, 300 cups had been taken - people, especially the kids, stormed towards the tables and grabbed as many cups as they could get a hold of - this incident gave us an idea of what could have happened if we had given out free sodas...

once the performances were finished the workshops began. these were geared at the youth learning some basic breakdance moves to see that it was in fact not all that difficult (well - I would never even try myself!) it was great to see the different circles of people and how the kids were picking up the moves - after a while there were loads of kids around the field just practising for themselves. The stage was taken over by them too - I guess it does not happen everyday that these kids get a chance to just dance away and be in the spotlight for a bit - there was a great energy around the place and from the looks of it everyone enjoyed themselves a great deal.