The icing on the many cakes!

After a few crazy busy weeks with nights filled running rehearsals and days spent cutting out the many props or organising invitations and promoting the event, the advocacy event I have been involved in planning came this past Thursday and it was a great success. The kids involved and watching all seemed to have a brilliant day and everyone in the hall was dancing with a huge smile and a pretty butterfly on their cheek by the end of the day, which for me counts as a success.
The main purpose of the day was to promote to children their rights (with local police men and council men there to answer their questions) and encourage families to treat ALL children with true love from the Bible, which in Africa normally means having to see beyond the exterior and into the heart. Street children are of course the perfect example of this; annoying people begging on the street and often stealing and lying. But of course, these circumstances are through no choice or even fault of their own, and we need to remember that although we can’t be sure of where money would go if we give to everyone (as parents tend to send their children to beg to benefit from their vulnerability and cuteness) we still need to see them as blameless children that deserve love. Everyone was put here for a reason, it’s just that sometimes we need to see past the dust to the sparkle underneath, which can sometimes take some serious elbow grease and polishing!

I was working on songs and a dance with local Sunday school children who were too young to learn a drama, and I did the drama with the Dwelling Places children who are ridiculously quick and talented in this area due to the stacks of experience they have from other such events. The main drama was called “Hot Steps to Heaven” after a popular reality TV dance show here “Hot Steps”. We had contestants competing for a place in heaven, the audience voting, some funny judges and presenters with huge personalities! The contestants were given several different challenges based on Biblical messages and their reaction to the challenges determined whether they were voted off during that round or not (i.e. those who put the weakest and youngest first and themselves last stayed). I was worried, only having about a week and a half to practice with the kids that they wouldn’t understand the concept properly, let alone remember lines but they were so enthusiastic as they all love Hot Steps and their brilliant personalities shone through and they made the parts really come to life, it was hilarious to watch!

As well as the dance the little kiddies were doing we had two interpretive dances with stories or messages behind them. The first showed a short story of how children can end up on the street abandoned and how alone they can feel. The music for this was from Sigor Ros which can be pretty intense and with the story behind it all it was actually quite difficult watching these children pretending a story that most of them have lived. It especially hit me when they rearranged the way I had told them to sit whilst begging because the way they wanted to sit was more comfortable for long periods which is what you need when you’re begging. At that point I felt I could almost see the million miles between their childhoods and my own.
The final dance was to the song True Colours and showed the older girls taking the risk to remove the horrible, scary looking masks from the little kids to show beautiful butterflies painted on their smiling faces underneath. One of the children read the verse “I can never forget you! I have written your name on the palms of my hands” from Isaiah 49:16. It was then explained that although God never forgets us it is our responsibility to also never forget each other and to always take the risk of removing a “mask” from someone to help them show their true colours underneath. To make sure this message hit home everyone was given a small card butterfly with “Be a blessing...reveal the beauty” written on the back in the local Lunganda language. But more exciting than this everyone got one of the hundreds of fairy cakes I had made, a samosa and a soda. The kids were all very excited about this! It was a good day all round, and the fact that the electricity lasted the whole time wasn’t much short of a miracle as we have had some serious power cuts recently so I was so thankful for that. We all came home in the bus Thursday afternoon like sleepy babies that had had too much excitement for one day and almost collapsed entering the cottage. I’m not sure yet what my next project at Dwelling Places will be, but i am sure I will still be visiting the kids home as much as possible after work. They are the sweetest kids, sometimes cheeky but so kind and all of them true survivors. I couldn’t ask for better company.