28.08.2012 - Tuesday

28.08.2012 - Itigi
It's back to the church again early next morning (5.45). We have to walk several kilometres to get breakfast...Luckily everyone is very helpful here lending a hand:-)

On the way back to the church we are already missing our luxurious accommodation hoping that tonight's will be just as fantastic!

Our concert in Itigi starts at 9 o'clock after breakfast. Again there are local choirs ..

...and us. Our hosts like our programme very much.

Again we are performing in front of a big audience in Itigi:-)

Some are even whatching us from the outside.

The Africans take it very easy during the concert like their fellowmen did during our previous performances. This means that while one choir is performing some people from the audience sponaneously get up and dance along. There comes a point when we can no longer bear the synthesizer sound of some of the songs, so we just start to play along.

During the concert or sometimes afterwards, there is time for questions about vocal techniques, rythm and dancing. In this context we are beings asked about the meaning of those lines and dots on our white sheets of paper...

...so we explain immediately what notes are!

The "conductors" of the Tanzanian "choirs" want to know how we learn our pieces of music. So after the lesson about notes we also explain to them the term "vocal training" giving them a sample straight away. One of the conductors finally proposes that we should leave our conductor here in order to teach his local choir to sing. In return he would come to Germany in order to teach us to dance;-)

We would like to know of them where the electricity in the church comes from. But then everything is self-explicatory, because we discover a very thin cable and other bizarre constructions.

After this exchange our Tanzanian friends want to hear another song. We sing "We are the World" by Michal Jackson and as it befits a song like this we integrate our hosts' children:-)

Touched by our singing and with heavy hearts the choirs of Itigi say goodbye to us with a little gift...a hand-made cooking spoon.

We have to line up at the church entrance in a typically African manner, so that every concert/church visitor has the chance to shake hands with everyone of us.

There is no time to rest as we go directly on to Singida where everyone's already longing to see us.

After a short performance we have to go to our tonight's guesthouse first. But although you wouldn't  guess from the outside appearance, the interior of the hostel is iunfortunately in a terrible state. So we decide to look for a different accommodation because no water and no mosquito nets is a bit sparse.

While negotiations are going on about what to do next and where to sleep tonight, some of us use the spare moment for a little siesta...

...which is however immediately cancelled. We do not waste any time rehearsing the pieces for tonight's concert outside to the pleasure of the passersby.

In the next concert (together with some other  Tanzanian choirs as usual) you can tell that we are slowly becoming more "African". The motto is: get up and join in. So it is hardly surprising that even during the first 10 minutes no one is kept in their seats - the whole church is dancing and singing.

As it could be expected, everybody livens up and we all sing together "Mambo sawa sawa".

The concert is yet another great success and everybody is having a lot ot fun:-)