Day 369: I Shake My Body

by claire, claire@trippingonwords.com

For the kids, fellowship night is the best night of the week. It is the night when they take charge at Tumaini and lead their own four hour dance fest/talent show of a worship service. For Lara and Claire, fellowship night is a long, long evening. Emotionally, fellowship begins hours before it starts, when the Tumaini rumor mill begins flying that some individual mzungu (white person) is not coming to fellowship. Then the next few hours are spent asking all the other mzungus if they know for sure if the rest of the other mzungus "will truly be coming to fellowship this time?"

The actual event itself begins after our Friday run and Githeri dinner, when the children get hot and sweaty dancing like maniacs a la Lord of the Flies to homemade drums. From there, things become more structured when presentations begin. The list of presentation givers is sacred, and the person holding the list that night is a V.I.P. who gets to authoritatively change the order of the presenters with wild abandon. When the V.I.P. calls you off the list (if you were lucky enough this week to even be on the list in the first place), you get to go to the front of the crowded hall and invite your "brothers" and/or "sisters" to come join you.

This is always a particularly confusing part in the evening for Lara and me, as we invariably ask whatever 7 year old munchkin we are sitting next to if any of the people are the actual "blood" brothers or sisters of the presenter. The thing about Tumaini is that you can live here for months and not know that so and so child has three siblings here as well.

Needless to say, Lara and I are regularly invited as the "sisters" of presenters.

Two weeks ago, we sang a song about Noah and his dear old ark, that Lara taught the children. It's a catchy song, really, and peaks with such stellar lyrics as "it rained and poured for forty dayzies dayzies...nearly drove those animals crazy crazy..."

Last week, Baby Beluga was the song that Caro, 10, presented with me and Lara. You may remember the lyrics to this one.

This week, I was presenting, and I called up no less than 9 of my youngest "sisters" to sing the following, highly strange, extraordinarily popular song here at Tumaini. We had practiced it on the run today, in hopes that tonight would be a particularly stellar performance:

and this one
he is named "Claire/Milka/MercyLynn!" (insert name of each singer on every verse)

and I shake my body until i die
and I shake my body until i die

the time is coming to be a "Writer/Doctor/Pilot" (insert the future profession of each singer here on every verse)

enjoy, enjoy until I die
enjoy, enjoy until I die