Day 6b...secret surprise!

As per usual (!) the rest of the afternoon was full of excitement and touching moments (literally and figuratively).

After beading with the Mamas, James our facilitator told us that we would be going across the street to the Salabwek primary school for a special celebration.

a BIG welcome at Salabwek primary school

The kids of Salabwek....getting closer and closer!

Teachers and parents of Salabwek

As we learned at the Kisaruni highschool, a traditional welcome to visitors is to sing and dance and we were in for a real treat this afternoon. James suggested maybe we would like to prepare a song and dance in return! Yikes, we had 10 minutes to pull together something fabulous. After trying a series of line dances (thanks Alberta folk!) that nobody could master we ended up deciding on the chicken dance.....mortifying and hilarious at the same time! Sadly, I don't have a video of this. But I do have one of the kids...

 

 

 

 

Note: My friend Brianna also made a medley of all the singing on our trip

 - check it out http://youtu.be/vgVfkfUfwhw

 

After the kids were finished singing and dancing, some of the Mamas got up to sing and dance and give us beaded necklaces. They invited us to get up and sing and dance with them which was fun! And then we were swarmed by the kiddies who all wanted to dance with us too! This was a bit overwhelming since there were so many of them. Especially when we tried to take their picture, they went nuts trying to see themselves in our cameras.

 

 

Bob, the only KPMG Partner on the trip, got up to say a few words on our behalf and thank the community for welcoming us. And then one of the most hilarious moments of the trip occurred....Bob got given a goat!! The baby goat was placed in Bob's arms and not knowing what to do with it, and since the music was still playing, he started dancing with it! OMG, too funny (but maybe you had to be there?). It was a great honour to be given a goat, since the community only eats meat 2 or 3 times a year on special occasions. Don't worry, we didn't slaughter and eat the goat but we did bring it back to Bogani with us (probably to be eaten at a later date - sorry!).

The highlight of the day was a "secret surprise" during and after dinner. It was a special performance by the Kenya Boys Choir! For those of you that don't know, these guys are awesome and famous, they even performed at Obama's inauguration! My video is too large to load but here is a small taste of what they do...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrOKDU048IM

Kenya Boys Choir

Kenya Boys Choir

 

Note: One of our facilitators, Amy, coined the phrase "secret surprise". We all told her that all surprises were secret but the phrase stuck - and we enjoyed many secret surprises during our week in the Mara!

 

Day 7....first safari! ;- )