Namibia’s Got Talent
on Sally in Namibia (Namibia), 12/Aug/2009 06:44, 34 days ago
As a volunteer you often find yourself venturing into unknown territory– demonstrating the well tested VSO skills of flexibility and adaptability. So it was that I found myself as one of three judges for a talent contest for an OVC's after school club run by one of my fellow volunteers.There are limited places available in the club and they are highly sought after. The idea is that children with potential are referred by teachers and are then admitted. I recognised several children from the Young Achievers club that I volunteered at for a while last year. I took it as a positive sign that the Young Achievers were continuing to achieve.The judges sat at the front at a table complete with table cloth, water and mints and we were equipped with a judging sheet to complete for each act. There were four categories– singing, dancing, poem, drama/story telling and competitors were judged on their entrance to the 'stage', their use of the stage, their volume, their creativity plus a few others. There were probably 100+ children in the audience waiting for the show to start. I think there were about 30 different acts that we had to judge.The first act was a late entrant and she was singing along to some backing music. I was a bit concerned as the volume of the backing music was higher than her so it was difficult to know whether we were scoring Celine Dion or the girl singing!I was expecting that most of the acts would be quite similar to each other and was pleasantly surprised by the diversity of performers. The singers ranged from solo, unaccompanied, performers to two big choirs and even a small band with drums and a keyboard that was powered by blowing into a tube. The number of entrants for poems was small but they were great although I suspected that there was an attempt to increase the chance of winning by presenting a story as a poem in a couple of cases. The drama and story telling category provided a range of stories plus a rather complex drama involving two couples going for HIV testing, one of the actors in particular was very talented, projecting his voice well and remembering not to turn his back on the audience.The dancing was the most popular category for both boys and girls. There were several demonstrations of kwaito dancing which still amazes me as the legs don't seem to be attached to the body and for some of the moves the thigh muscles must be like concrete. There is an extension of this dancing which involves sticking your hand under your t shirt and then poking it out of the collar which I don't fully understand but seems to be quite popular. There was one boy who had obviously been watching a bit too much Michael Jackson but hadn't fully grasped that when you grab your crotch you are supposed to let go again– instead he just danced holding onto his crotch which had the unfortunate effect of making him seem like he needed the toilet!The girls dancing was an experience– my bottom just doesn't wiggle and shake like that! They all seemed to change into the shortest possible skirts which were a little bit like ra-ra skirts and this made the position of the judges quite risky – they would come right up to the judges table meaning that their bottoms were at our eye level and shake away for all they were worth. One of my co-judges leant over and asked me if one girl was wearing any knickers – I preferred not to look too closely! One girl seemed to have an extra part of her performance which was holding her mouth half open and resting her tongue slightlyout of her mouth which was quite disturbing. My colleague from Uganda asked me if it was a traditional type of dancing as he felt that it was quite obscene. I think a lot of it has more to do with dancing on MTV but the traditional Ovambo dancing is also very focussed on the hips but the skirts are longer so the movements are more subtle and show through the movement of the fabric rather than the body. It's definitely quite sexual and they were very good but whether it was appropriate for a children's talent show I'm not so sure!Judging was really difficult and I'm sure some of my scoring would not have stood up to scrutiny as I felt I was quite inconsistent but eventually all the scores had been totalled and the winners' names were announced. The prize in each category was $100 and there were some delighted children running about.It was all a great experience and there were definitely some talented performers– it was also a great way of confidence building and you could could see the shy (and not so shy) delight as each performer completed their turn. I don't think I'll be getting a judges position on Pop Idol though!