We recently had a gig out in Africa with an amazing company, Just Hope International. We were there to follow around their team and see what impact their foundation was making in what is arguably the poorest country in the world, Sierra Leone. What an eye opener! After flying around the world for almost 24 hours we finally stepped foot on ground in Africa and started making our way several hours out in to the bush. The roads are so incredibly terrible there that to drive 45 miles took us about 3 and a half hours. Severely jet lagged and just sick of traveling the worst thing happened… the car broke down.
African Hut
We were in a small village where all the homes were made of straw and almost nobody had clothes on their back. As we were driving through the small town it looked like maybe 20 people lived there. Once they heard the car doors slam shut all of a sudden there was more than a hundred people walking down the road to see what was going on. They don’t see cars very often and definitely don’t see white people ever. Personally, I started to fear for us as I saw a mob of people approach the car. The locals do not speak english and we of course don’t speak their language, so one of the guys did all that he could… the hokey pokey. That’s right, you put your left foot in, you take your left foot out hokey pokey. Before I knew what was happening our whole team was doing the hokey pokey and all the locals joined in laughing and enjoying watching a bunch of white people sing and dance. It did not matter what we were saying. All that mattered is that we had a smile on our face and were trying to communicate with the locals.
doing the hokey pokey
After a few minutes of singing and dancing the whole town started to sing for us. Almost as if they were returning the favor of hospitality in communication. With probably 50 kids singing and dancing the situation had shifted from “What the hell is going on!?” to just a bunch of people having a good time.
Vroooom! The car started up, we jumped in and waved goodbye. Our first day in Africa just became awesome! Stay tuned for more pics and vids from Africa!
Here is a quick little video of the moment in time:
